James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (1933): Part Two

Very few, even among the most intelligent Negroes, could find a tenable position on which to base a stand for social among the other equalities demanded. When confronted by the question, they were forced by what they felt to be self-respect, to refrain from taking such a stand. As a matter of truth, self-respect demands that no mad admit, even tacitly, that he is unfit to associate with any of his fellow men (and that is aside from whether he wishes to associate with them or not). In the South, policy exacts that any pleas made by a Negro—or by a white man, for that matter—for fair treatment to the race, shall be predicated upon a disavowal of “social equality.” (475)

In the second half of James Weldon Johnson’s autobiography Along This Way, we are first introduced to his work as United States consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua. He got these positions through the aid of Booker T. Washington, to whom he reported on the conditions of blacks in Latin America. He is not too happy with this position due to health problems and anxiety about the US involvement in Latin America. Johnson does document the revolution in Nicaragua, which the US government supported. These were actually good times. The port he was stationed at was small and uninteresting, except when the US naval ships arrived in port, which created a “social flurry” for Johnson and his wife. As a diligent consul, he worked hard to defend and expand US commercial interests as well. He had become an agent of empire.

At the end of this section of the autobiography, Johnson tries to come to terms with the US role in Latin America. He argues that empire was about more than simply defending investments, concessions, or securing debt obligations, but is rather part of a larger strategy (going back to the early nineteenth century) to protect and secure order and commerce through Central America and the Caribbean. To me these sounds to be true enough, except that the goal of smooth and peaceful trade through Central America seems to imply the access necessary to collect on those debts and obligations. I will generally agree that the major goal of empire in the modern world is the imposition of order on the fundamental “anarchy” of everyday life. This battle has been waged by governments, missionaries, capital and the other agents of empire. By 1915, he is clearly on the anti-imperialist side of things, arguing that: “For the seizure of an independence nation [Haiti], we offered the stock justifications: protection of American lives and American interests, and the establishment and maintenance of internal order. Had all these reasons been well founded, they would not have constituted justification for the seizure of a sovereign state at peace with us.” (515)

The final part of Along This Way picks up with Johnson’s return to full-time residency in the United States and his growing involvement in the civil rights movement of the day. He joined the National Association for the Advanced of Colored People and began writing editorials for the New York Age. He also took the time to continue his writing as a lyricist and develop his slowly emerging fame as the author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (a novel he wrote while Johnson was a US consul). His politics involved the dilemma addressed in the quote opening this post. How to move toward arguments for social equality, and indeed even defining what that might mean. Much of this work involved breaking away from the “Tuskegee Idea” of Booker T. Washington, which set social equality as an unachievable or nebulous goal. But he did take one important idea from Washington, namely that “hammering away at white America” was not enough. “I felt convinced that it would be necessary to awaken black America, awaken it to a sense of its rights and to a determination to hold fast to such as it possessed and to seek in every orderly way possible to secure all others to which it was entitled. I realized that, regardless of what might be done for black America, the ultimate and vital part of the work would have to be done by black America itself; and that to do that work black America needed an intelligent program.” (479) This seems to be an important principle predicated on direct action.

Zora Neale Hurston: Selected Articles

Glee clubs and concert singers put on their tuxedoes , bow prettily to the audience, get the pitch and burst into magnificent song—but not Negro song. The real Negro singer cares nothing about pitch. The first notes just burst out and the rest of the church join in—fired by the same inner urge. Every man trying to express himself through song. Every man for himself. Hence the harmony and disharmony, the shifting keys and broken time that make up the spiritual. (870–871)

This volume of Zora Neale Hurston’s non-fiction writing ends with a series of articles published over the course of her career, beginning in the 1920s and ending with what may be her final public word, criticizing what she saw as the presumption of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. Most of the articles collected here deal in one way or another with Hurston’s studies in folklore or are autobiographical. The highlights for me were defiantly some of her writings for Negro: An Anthology and some of the folk lore she collected for the Florida Writers’ Project (a subset, I guess, of the Works Progress Administration).

The selections open with “The Eatonville Anthology,” which is a set of vignettes about life in Hurston’s hometown of Eatonville Florida. In this, Hurston made an attempt to get at the rich texture of this small town. Although it was an all-black small town, it has an incredible diversity. From this we can understand her often-stated hostility toward the idea of “racial consciousness.” We also see that even if it is sustaining a mainstream set of values, a small town seems to need rebellious elements to survive. The best example of this here is Daisy Taylor, the “town vamp.” When she left for Orlando, an environment she could more likely hide herself, we think that Eatonville lost a great deal of vibrancy.

Her writings for Negro: An Anthology, edited by Nancy Cunard and published in 1934, are an attempt to lay out the elements of African American culture with a degree of scientific objectivity lacking in Mules and Men. It is simply a great introduction into black folklore, cultural icons (Mother Catherine, Uncle Monday), and motifs. It also has one of the most succinct explanations of the place of the Devil in black folklore. Also read this for the introduction to the “jook” or the “Negro bawdy house.”

Hurston’s work on folklore for the Florida Writers’ Project is no less significant, coming after she had already completed Mules and Men and Tell My Horse. She provides a mature and useful definition of folklore. She sees art as the discovery of the truth that already exists in folklore. It is worth quoting at length. From my perspective as a left libertarian, I appreciate this because it helps us respect the canon while also realizing that it is important to decenter it. The canon is the realization of the truths of a culture, not the true expression in itself. We sometimes see artists as the vanguard, but maybe we need to see them more like a scientist analyzing the facts of culture.

Every generation or so some individual with extra keen perception grasps something of the obvious about us and hitches the human race forward slightely by a new “law.” For instance, millionso f things had been falling on and about men for thousands fo years before the falling apple hit Newton on the head and made him see the attraction of the earth for all unsupported objects heavier than air. So we have the law of gravity. In the same way, art is a discovery in itself. Seen in detail it is a series of discoveries, perhaps intended in the first instance to stave off boredom. In a long view, art is the setting up of monuments to the ordinary things about us, in a moment and in time. [. . .] Folklore is the arts of the people before they find out that there is any such thing as art, and they make it out of whatever they find at hand. (876)

In later details, Hurston explains that the relative underdevelopment of black art in America (in her opinion anyway) was due to the silence enforced on generations by slavery.

One article that should be brought up is “Crazy for this Democracy,” written in 1945. As my last point highlighted, Hurston censored her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) after the US entered World War II. She removed much of her criticism of US imperialism, specifically her claims that Japan was merely copying the US imperial practice in the Pacific. By 1945 she was no longer able to sit on her hands on this issue and published a devastating critique of US. He fed into the language of the “Double V” movement, which consisted of the belief that the battle against fascism in Europe was deeply connected to the battle against Jim Crow. What makes the document unique and important is that Hurston places the struggle against Jim Crow in a global context. This essay should be read more often as an example of African-American global consciousness in the 20th century.

Her 1955 letter to the Orlando Sentinel, “Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix,” is her response to Brown v. Board of Education. She was not saying that Jim Crow is defensible (see “Crazy for this Democracy”), nor was she saying that integration was not an admirable goal. Her criticism of the decision was that it exposed a hypocrisy among black leaders. She correctly points out that a major trend in black life since Reconstruction was the movement toward self-rule. We see that in the Union Leagues, towns like Hurston’s own Eatonville, and—Hurston points out—in black educational institutions. She feared that a subtext to the decision was that black teachers could not teach black students. Forced court order integration seemed to undermine these efforts in her view. This would be fine if it was not for the rhetoric of racial consciousness (which she attacked at length in her autobiography). As she summarizes: “Thems my sentiments and I am sticking by them. Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association. That old white mare business can go racking on down the road for all I care.” (958) I do not know much about how the black nationalists responded to school desegregation, but I suspect they may have agreed with Hurston here. I would only add that Hurston’s own education was based on “ethical and cultural desegregation” but formally tied to all-black institutions.

Zora Neale Hurston: “Tell My Horse” (1938)

Our history has been unfortunate. First we were brought here to Haiti and enslaved. We suffered great cruelties under the French and even when they had been driven out, they left here certain traits of government that have been unfortunate for us. Thus having a nation continually disturbed by revolution and other features not helpful to advancement we have not been able to develop economically and culturally as many of us wished. These things being true, we have not been able to control certain bad elements because of a lack of a sufficient police force. [. . .] It is like your American gangsters. (482–483)

Zora Neale Hurston wrote Tell My Horse in 1938 after she completed field work in Haiti and Jamaica in 1936 and 1937. In some ways the book is a follow up to Mules and Men looking at the survival of African traditions in the New World. She explores voodoo (switching to this spelling, so I will too) in both works. As expected, the tradition is much more fully developed in this book surveying life in the Caribbean. Hurston is also interested in the overall question of black self-rule. While the stories in Mules and Men clearly emerged from a biracial society and reflect the emotional and creative needs of a people oppressed from within, Tell My Horse shows a people capable of self-rule but suffering the exploitation of an entire world system, policed by the United States (Haiti was occupied in much of the 1920s by the United States).

The book is broken up into three parts. The first too provide a general history, examination of social conditions, and political background of Jamaica and Haiti. The theme for both of these is the legacy of slavery and resistance to slavery. In Jamaica it is explored through a surviving maroon community. In Haiti is more overly politicized through the historical memory of Haitian revolution. (And by the way, I have noticed while working on this blog how often Haiti comes up in US writing.) The third part of the book is the longest and constitutes the bulk of the material is an anthropological accounting of voodoo in Haiti. The book ends with some Creole language songs, many of which are discussed in the texts in their full context.

As I hinted above the major tension in the first parts of this book is between self-rule and an empire posed from above. I opened this review with a quote by a Haitian physician, recorded by Hurston. He is basically showing how the burden of empire has caused a social breakdown in Haitian society. The options are authoritarian policing or a total violent breakdown of social order. In fact, these are the same things. Police emerge as a reflection of the annihilation of society. It also seems to speak to the problem of empire. The disorder on the ground in Haiti and other Caribbean nations was the constant justification for US imperialism. Yet, to look on the bright side, the signs of the capacity of self-rule and democratic order from below are there.

Hurston’s visit to the maroon community of Accompong is important in her general interpretation of the Caribbean. It is an example of black self-rule going back to the seventeenth century, an experiment centuries longer lasting than the United States.

Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica. And yet as I stood there looking into the sea beyond Black river from the mountains of St. Catherine, and looking at the thatched huts close at hand, I could not help remembering that a whole civilization and the mightiest nation on earth had grown up on the mainland since the first runaway slave had taken refuge in these mountains. They were here before the Pilgrims landed on the bleak shores of Massachusetts. Now, Massachusetts had stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Accompong had remained itself. (294)

As a self-contained, society with a tradition of self-rule they are a constant reminder of the alternatives that existed to empire and capitalism. In contrast, Haiti is for Hurston an example of the crushing burden of empire on societies.

When Hurston arrived in Haiti for her field work, the memory of the recent US intervention was strong among the people she talked to. What may have been—from the US perspective—a passive phase in foreign policy, was for Haitians a reminder of the betrayal of the revolution. Hurston and her sources are unequivocal in their blame on both external manipulation and the failure of the Haitian elite to do something with their “democracy.” She compares the opportunistic elite in Haiti, prone to ideological and rhetorical flourish, to the black “race leaders” in the United States, who Hurston sees as being displaced by the “doers,” a more silent class but more influential in improving conditions.

Much of this “doing” that Hurston likes so much is reflected in the religious traditions in the Caribbean. It developed very much into a counter-culture, complete with its own social hierarchy and traditions. For every opportunistic political leader, there were dozens of “clans” that run function quite well, empowered by the tradition of voodoo. Hurston points out that structurally, these communities have much in common with the male-dominated African clan. She even entered into a harsh verbal confrontation with a man who debated her about the merits of gender equality. Yet, within voodoo there was a place for women to be active. She talks about a Madame Etienne who had a strong foundation of power and influence in Archahaie.

Zombies come across almost as an extension of the greater political narrative of Haiti as Hurston sees it. By turning free people into thralls, the houngan (those voodoo spiritual leaders) betray the victory of the revolution, turning self-rule into dependency. It is a revival of the master-slave relationship. The fact that such practices are signs of evil and resisted by most (there are elaborate burial rights used to prevent being turned into zombies), is a parallel to the hostility that most Haitians felt toward the opportunities government.

Although it is not a pretty picture at all time at the grassroots of Jamaican and Haitian society, Zora Neale Hurston in Tell My Horse is detailing the unending tension between empire and self-rule. The signs seem to point to the endurance of self-rule, cultivated through counter-cultures, secret societies, deviant religious practices, and various other transgressions. I was reminded often of Bryan Palmer’s book Cultures of Darkness which looks at these secret societies as a necessary component of capitalism.

Frank Norris: “The Octopus” (1901): Part Two

He saw his wheat, like the crest of an advancing billow, crossing the Pacific, bursting upon Asia, flooding the Orient in a golden torrent. It was the new era. He had lived to see the death of the old and the birth of the new; first the mine, now the ranch; first gold, now wheat. Once again he became a pioneer, hardly, brilliant, tracking colossal chances, blazing the way, grasping a fortune—a million in a single day. (831)

One thing that is immediately apparent in the second part of Frank Norris’ The Octopus is that the major imagery shifts from that of the malevolent railroad to wheat. This is both because Norris wants to highlight the major theme of “The Epic of Wheat” (left unfinished at his death) and because we see the characters, while not giving up the political battle against the railroad which is hoping to squeeze them to death, engaged in the act of producing and harvesting their crops. Through action, both political and productive, the farmers of the San Joaquin valley begin to form a culture of resistance. The two work together. By continuing to produce in the face of almost inevitable defeat, they empower and give more seriousness to their political struggle.

 

Norris describes this dilemma at several times through different characters, but we see again and again, small producers struggling against forces much larger then themselves. But the wheat must be produced. Unlike industrial workers, withdrawing the labor was not possible. Is an almost a requirement for a promethean belief in the future if one wants to farm? Maybe, but for Norris the reality is more brutal. The wheat has to be produced and sold because the farmers had no other choice.

Every cent of his earning was sunk in this hop business of his. More than that, he had borrowed money to carry it on, certain of success—borrowed of S. Behrman, offering his crop and his little home as security. Once he failed to meet his obligation, S. Behrman would foreclose. Not only would the Railroad devour every morsel of his profits, but also it would take form him his home; at a blow he would be left penniless and without his home. What would then become of his mother—and what would become of the little tad? (855)

The farmers’ failure to defeat the railroad leads to their being driven down into almost peasant status. Norris’ diagnosis in the conclusion is that this defeat was inevitable due to overwhelming power of the railroad, which could defeat the farmers either as individuals (through land prices and freight rates) or even entire political organizations of farmers through political power and the law. Norris explores both of these losing battles that lead to both very real deaths, shattered dreams, and the end of the Jeffersonian ideal of the autonomous agrarian.

In the backdrop of everything is the emerging global system and America’s place in it as a producer of wheat and an imperial power in its own right. The Octopus is one of the better introductions to the study of America’s place in the industrial world order (if a bit too long for undergraduate courses). We are introduced to this theme most explicitly by the character Cedarquist, a shipbuilder and merchant. He makes his money off the international transport of wheat. He understands how high the stakes are in the global wheat market and feels that the farmers are incapable of understanding the opportunities available to them if they only dream bigger. What Cedarquist does not fully appreciate is that the farmers are already forced into a global market by the railroads. It is not clear that Cedarquist offers a better alternative to “the Octopus.” In his mind, his dreams cloud his mind of the brutal realities of the indebted and squeezed farmer, who had the play the game by the rules pre-set by the capitalist class. The dreams of Cedarquist to remake the market and save the besieged San Joaquin farmer strikes us as delusional. Nevertheless, his monologue is a useful introduction to the theme of the place of American wheat in the global economy.

As a market for our Production—or let me take a concrete example—as a market for our Wheat, Europe is played out. Population in Europe is not increasing fast enough to keep up with the rapidity of our production. In some cases, as in France, the population is stationary. We, however, have gone on producing wheat at tremendous rate. The result is over-production. We supply more than Europe can eat, and down go the prices. The remedy is not in the curtailing of our wheat areas, but in this, we must have new markets, greater markets. (819)

The solution is to open up China, which can also allow the farmers to bypass the railroads and the grain elevators of Chicago. It could have worked if the railroad was not already strangling the western farmer.

This hints at yet another theme that Norris is grasping at: the end of the frontier. He may have been aware of Frederick Jackson Turner’s historical work on the frontier and its importance to American history. It certainly seems he was aware of the themes, as a California writer. For Norris this was not simply a matter of the emergence of civilization, but the slow triumph of capital, of the institution over the individual. If we look at his work as a whole we find that Norris contuinly comes back to this power of external forces (habits, family, greed) over individuals but never is the institutional critique so strong as in The Octopus. Perhaps this is why I kept thinking about the television series Deadwood while reading this novel. They are thematically united.

Well, so much for Frank Norris. There are some essays at the end of the volume, but as a group they do not add enough to justify an entire post. They are mostly about he saw the craft of writing. I appreciated his call for an American epic, expressed in these essays, for I always am drawn to the promethean.

 

Henry Adams: “History of the United States of America: During the Second Administration of James Madison” (Parts Two and Three)

To men who believed that every calamity was a Divine judgment, politics and religion could not be made to accord. Practical politics, being commonly an affair of compromise and relative truth,—a human attempt to modify the severity of Nature’s processes,—could not expect sympathy from the absolute and abstract behests of religious. Least of all could war, even in its most necessary form, be applauded or encouraged by any clergyman who followed the precepts of Christ. The War of 1812 was not even a necessary war. Only in a metaphysical or dishonest sense could any clergyman affirm that war was more necessary in 1812 than in any former year since 1783. Diplomacy had so confused its causes that no one could say for what object Americas had intended to fight,­—still less, after the peace in Europe, for what object they continued their war. Assuming the conquest of Canada and of Indian Territory to be the motive most natural to the depraved instincts of human nature, the clergy saw every reason for expecting a judgment. (920)

The final two volumes of Henry Adams’ nine volume history of America during the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison cover the final year of the War of 1812, the peace settlement, and the legislation passed during the final two years of Madison’s term. There is also space, after almost 2,600 pages of detailed diplomatic, political, and military history to consider how the United States had changed between 1800 and 1815. The changes are dramatic and for Adams signified a consolidation of the national character. This is not very far from how historians now reflect on the War of 1812. They see it as an important war for its contribution to American identity and American nationalism. Of course, it provided many heroes (two would become presidents) and symbols (the National Anthem). I could not find any historians that agree with me that it should be looked at as a war for empire. I hope that is a sign of my novelty and not a sign that I am totally off base.

My opening quote is from Adams’ coverage of the Massachusetts clergy and their sustained opposition to the war. When reading it, I found it a useful reminder that some people certainly saw the war of 1812 for what it was, a vainglorious and ultimately successful attempt to expand the reach of the U.S. empire. I have covered this in my previous posts, so I will move to why Adams thinks 1815 was a turning point in the American identity.

Between 1800 and 1815, the United States became committed to the Federalist policies, even as they were being enacted by Republican legislatures. Acceptance of a national debt, a standing army, an expanded navy, and taxation were made necessary by the war and proved to be not at all as odious as the Jeffersonians made it out to be. There was a common acceptance of national development as well. “For the first time in their history, as a nation, the people of the United States ceased to disturb themselves about politics or patronage.” (1245) What replaced these political divisions was a movement toward economism. He even mentions in passing that this had a tragic consequence in entrenching slavery in the South. North and south, across parties, all whites could apparently enjoy the profits derived from the Cotton South, without political divides getting in the way. “The Rights of Man occupied public thoughts less, and the price of cotton more.” (1253) This, I hope we can agree, was not a positive shift in American life. It seems to suggest an end to a fierce debate in the early years of the American republic over what liberty would mean. It would not be until the Civil War that such a debate was revived (and again, capital and economic necessity would win out over an expanded definition of freedom).

While becoming more economically-minded and politically-unified, the nation had also become more integrated with canals, roads, and internal markets. Perhaps reflecting the turn toward practical politics, thought was also driven toward pragmatism. The hard-headed theological Puritanism of the colonial era gave way to new religious movements that had a softer, more unifying perspective. Adams reports on the rise of Unitarianism. Fixed principles in religion went along with fixed principles in politics. In literature, the shift in these years was the turn away from England and the development of an American character. Adams spares a few words for fellow Library of America member Washington Irving and his The History of New York.

The result of all of this, for Adams, was a country that was no longer in danger of being divided into separate nations. It is not clear what he made of the Civil War. Apparently it was not evidence of a divided nation. Writing at a time when the Civil War was commonly seen as an unfortunate scuffle between brothers, perhaps Adams really meant it. Is it possible that we can look at the period covered in Adams’ history as the beginning of the closing of political options and therefore the real end of the American Revolution. Never again could a politician get away with calling his election to president a “revolution,” like Jefferson did in 1800.

Adams ends his history connecting to some of the themes in his other work about the shift from the medieval to the modern. For the United States, the dynamo won out in 1815.

New subjects demanded new treatment, no longer dramatic but steadily tending to become scientific. The traits of American character were fixed; the rate of physical and  economical growth was established; and history, certain that at a given distance of time the Union would contain so many millions of people, with wealth valued at so many millions of dollars, because thenceforward chiefly concerned to know what kind of people these millions were to be. They were intelligent, but what paths would their intelligence select? They were quick, but what solution of insoluble problems would quickness hurry? They were scientific, and what control would their science exercise over their destiny? (1345)

 

 

Henry Adams: “History of the United States of America: During the Second Administration of James Madison” (Part One)

The government expected no other difficulties in the Southern country, and had no reason to fear them. If new perils suddenly arose, they were due less to England, Spain, or the United State than to the chance that gave energy and influence to Tecumthe. The Southern Indians were more docile and less warlike than the Indians of the Lakes. The Chicksaws and Choctaws, who occupied the whole extent of the country on the east back of the Mississippi from the Ohio to the Gulf, gave little trouble of anxiety, and even the great confederacy of Muskogees, or Creeks, who occupied the territory afterward called the State of Alabama and part of George, fell in some degree into a mode of life which seemed likely to make them tillers of the soil. (771)

In the final quarter of his history of the Jeffersonian Republicans during the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Henry Adams breaks from tradition. Previously, he divided each term into two volumes, each covering a legislative session. In his coverage of the second term of Madison, however, he uses three volumes and spends most those three volumes on the first year and a half of that term, up until the Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812. He has little to say about the rest of Madison’s achievements (perhaps there were none) and instead centers on the changes to the nation since Jefferson took office.

My basic reading of Henry Adams history (see the previous six posts) has been a bit contrarian but largely supportive. He was writing a history of the United States in the world a century before it would become cool to do so. Indeed, it is now the newest way to be trendy enough to (with a little luck) land an academic post. My own book is in this tradition. Certainly, he is still too much in diplomatic history, but my placing much of the story in London, Paris, or Madrid, Adams was being quite forward thinking. While another great historian of the turn of the century, Frederick Jackson Turner, was looking to the frontier, Adams still saw the American story in an Atlantic context. Adams sees a general irony in the Jeffersonians. They came into office hoping to undo the Federalist project, but had more or less enshrined it by 1817, when Madison retired. Yes, the Federalists were defeated, but not because their ideas were destroyed. Instead, the Federalists were co-opted. This is a common enough occurrence in American politics that we need not dwell on it now. My contrarian reading has been that Adams missed a larger irony, and one much more destructive. What the Jeffersonians did not want to confess was that the United States was like Europe in imperial ambition. By doubling the size of the nation and then fighting what can only be looked at as a war of empire. Britain and the U.S. were fighting over who would dominate North America. In my last post I argued that the war, being fought with debt and by the working poor, should be eerily familiar to American readers. The U.S. made at least three invasions during the war with England. The first was in Canada, where the army announced their goal of spreading liberty. They also invaded the Northwest territories, finishing the job Harrison began in the war against Tecumseh. Third, they began the conquest of the southern tribes such as the Creek, beginning Jackson’s fatal work.

So, the War of 1812 was not the second war of independence, but the next in a series of wars for a North Americana empire. The first was the Revolutionary War, followed by the Whiskey Rebellion, followed by the Shawnee War. There is enough in the text to suggest Adams was aware of this, but was either too prejudice or too hesitant to point it out. Being written at a time when the United States was projecting its imperial power into the Pacific, we are right to question his oversight (others such as Mark Twain were not so blinkered.)

Well, the volume for today is devoted almost exclusively to 1813. To Adams’ credit, he spends much of this volume reporting on the violent and suppression of the Creeks during the war. Patriots often forget about Andrew Jackson’s activities prior to his 1814 victory in New Orleans. He was down there suppressing the Creek uprising against the United States. Apparently efforts at bringing the Creek into a grand coalition to oppose the expansion of the United States into the West had been going on for a while. Tecumseh had worked on it and left among the Creek many of his ideas, and more importantly likeminded leaders. The battle (or massacre) at Fort Mims was one of the great victories of the Creek in this uprising. Adams’ account of this is the first I have ever read, but it is a compelling read. The enslavement of all the blacks at Fort Mims by the Creek reminds us that one of the reasons the southern nations were seen by whites as more “civilized” is that they embraced agriculture and slavery.

So, we certainly have wars of conquest going on. Despite the claim made my Adams that the only territory gained during the war was of Mobile (the Spanish Fort Stoddert), we should not forget these internal conquests of Indians. Tecumseh, of course, died during the war in similar actions in the Northwest.

Surrender of the Creek

Adams continues to point out of Republican ideology led to the government to try to fight the war on the cheap, ensuring that the poorest Americans would do the fighting and dying. Much of what the government dealt with during the war was how to fund the army. Keeping costs down, “doing more with less,” is not a recent delusion. “Even if the whole bounty were added to the pay, and the soldier were to serve but twelve months, he would received only twenty dollars a month and his land-certificate. If he served his whole term of five years, he received little more than twelve dollars a month. The inducement was not great in such a community as the United States. The chances that such a measure would fill the ranks was small; yet the measure seemed extravagant to a party that had formerly pledged itself against mercenary armies.” (883) “Mercenary armies,” of course, is code for a professional, trained, and paid army.

Henry Adams: “History of the United States of America: During the First Administration of James Madison” (Part Two)

Politicians of the old school looked coldly on the war spirit. Nations like individuals, when driven to choose between desperate courses, might at time be compelled to take the chances of destruction, often destroying themselves, or suffering irreparable harm. Yet the opponents of war could argue that Americans were not placed between desperate alternatives. They had persevered hitherto, in spite of their leaders, in the policy of peace; had suffered much injury and acute mortification, but had won Louisiana and West Florida, had given democracy all it asked, and had remained in reasonable harmony with the liberal movement of the world. (374)

Henry Adams

In 1811 and 1812, the Jeffersonian Revolution could be said to have died with the coming of war with England. If Henry Adams’ account is to be believed, it was less a problem of war itself, but the consequences of war such as a standing army, increased taxation, and acceptance of the fact that the United States would and could play the imperial game were more devastating to the imagination of the Republicans. They seemed to really believe, for a time, that the nation was not their parents’ children. There are three important themes that this volume of Henry Adams’ history covers: the war against the Shawnee, the war debate, and the first year of the war and the changes it brought to the political system.

Adams throws the relationship between the white Americans and the Indians into the background. It only emerges momentarily. Thus when it came time to document the Shawnee revolt, Adams had to go back and review Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward them. While he believed that they should be brought into civilization, he was as brutal as any other president in the seizure of their lands. “His greed for land equaled that of any settler on the border, and his humanity to the Indian suffered the suspicion of having among its motives the purpose of gaining the Indian lands for the whites.” (348) Jefferson’s actions toward the Northwest territory Indians caused the Shawnee revolt as much as his foolish embargo pushed the nation to war. Both of these would be Madison’s job to clean up while Jefferson enjoyed blissful retirement. As anyone who has gotten this far into Adams’ history would expect, we learn much more about William Henry Harrison than we do about Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet. There is enough here, however, to know that the US policy toward the Northwest territory was imperial and violence was the end result of the U.S. greed for land. It was not so much one of the causes of the later War of 1812, it was a branch of the same tree.

In regards to the build up to war, Adams is most fascinated by the irony of the Jeffersonian Republicans taking such a violent lead to war. Was their earlier passivity, reflected in the Embargo Act, a reflection of their earlier naivety. Was the violent calls for war issued from Congress in 1811 their true colors? He momentarily plays with the idea that 12 years is as long as any such revolutionary spirit can be sustained before more cynical forces take over. “After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitutions; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy.” (380-381) In any case, the war debates overtook all other Republican policies. Adams argues that the army bill that funded the war was really a revolution in domestic policy, sealing the final gap between the Federalists and the Republicans.

As for the war, Adams’ position is that the United States was unprepared for the conflict, particularly against a nation that had been at almost continual war against France for literally decades. The lessons of the American Revolution, a war of liberation, would not serve the United States in a war of empire. I am now thinking that it is interesting that historians called this the “Second War of Independence” in yet another attempt to avoid the confession that their republic had become an empire. A proclamation to the people of Canada painted the U.S. invasion of that territory as a liberation. “You will be emancipated from tyranny and oppression, and restored to the dignified station of freemen. . . The United States offer you peace, liberty, and security.” (503) How many people have heard those words as they looked down the barrels of U.S. rifles? Well, for better or for worse, the U.S. designs on Canada faltered.

War in Canada

Like other American wars of empire, the War of 1812 was fought with little sacrifice of the people. There was little physical damage and few casualties. “The country refused to take the war seriously. A rich nation with seven million inhabitants should have easily put one hundred thousand men into the field, and should have found no difficulty in supporting them.” (567) Instead, the was was fought by the poor, who needed the meager army salary. The patriotic but well-off served the nation by joining the militias for six months of voluntary service, although never saw action. (These were the G.W. Bushes of the 19th century.)

The year 1812 ended with the nation at war, Madison easily re-elected president, but deep discord across the nation over who will fight the war, what the war is being fought for, and who would pay for the war expenses. The pattern established in this conflict would be carried on in future American conflicts. The war will be paid with debt, fought by the poor, and in the end celebrated as a great victory of a united people.

Henry Adams: “History of the United States of America: During the First Administration of James Madison” (Part One)

Meanwhile nothing could be more dangerous to the Americans than the loss of self-respect. The habit of denouncing themselves as cowards and of hearing themselves denounced as a race that cared only for money tended to produce the qualities imputed. Americans of 1810 were persuaded that they could not meet Englishmen or Frenchman on equal terms, man against man, or stand in battle against the veterans of Napoleon or Nelson. The sense of national and personal inferiority sank astonishingly deep. (150)

This quote from Henry Adams study of James Madison’s presidency (the second half of his massive nine volume history of the Jeffersonian “revolution”) suggests the theme of the first half of Madison’s first term. With Thomas Jefferson’s embargo a political and diplomatic failure, Madison was forced to sustain Jefferson’s final law, the Non-Intercourse Act. This loosened some aspect of the Embargo Act, banning trade only with England and France, but more or less sustained the United States’ weak hand. Combined with weak leadership in Congress and the White House (Adams is quite harsh on Madison who he saw as failing to meet the times).

In many ways, the Jeffersonian revolution had already failed by the time Madison took office. The only bright side of the embargos was that they did promote some local industrial development, running contrary to the Jeffersonian hope for an agrarian nation. Military expenses, slashed when Jefferson took office, were forcing a renewal of the national debt in the early years of Madison’s first term. Neither Britain nor France seemed to respect the United States. The largest humiliation came when the attempt to get Britain to agree to the terms of the Non-intercourse Act, which would open trade with Britain in exchange for certain concessions, failed in a public humiliation for the United States. After agreeing to the terms, a new British diplomat came in (a man named Francis James Jackson) and rescinded the deal. Madison flayed around trying to get the British to commit to their previous agreements. Neither was the legislature any more impressive, which resorted to Macon’s Bill No. 2, which opened trade to both Britain and France provisionally. If either stopped playing nice, the United States would restore the boycotts.

The boycotts that worked so well during the struggle leading up to the Revolutionary War, were simply weak foreign policy and made the United States look like a petulant child, all the while overstating its importance in the international commercial system. Madison, who opposed the Bill, was forced to accept Napoleon’s exploitation of the bill. Napoleon immediately granted the United States rights as neutral carriers, something France needed to sustain its rule over the European mainland. Of course, he would not necessarily follow through on his promise not to strike American shipping with Britain. Well, after three long years of the Jeffersonian attempt at forced neutrality, shipping reopened, but not on the terms that made the United States look strong. Essentially, Macon’s Bill No. 2 was a surrender to the Europeans.

Madison as President

Politically, the embargo crisis destroyed much of the energy of the Federalist Party, which was pushed to an even smaller minority in the 12th Congress. Adams also notices a change in the nature of the Republicans, who became less devoted to the principles that brought them into power and more interested in sustaining the power of the government. The previous Congress was so disliked that they even enjoyed some popularity although the institution was shattered. “Not only did Republicans and Federalists think alike for once, but even among the members themselves no one of weight had a good work to say of the body to which he belonged.” (221) This brings up an interesting question about why it is that the Congress of the United States is so commonly unpopular despite the innovations in self-rule that the American Revolution inspired. What does it tell us about the spirit of American politics that presidents tend to be more popular than the body representing the people?

While England and France were in a struggle for survival, the United States kept on playing small games on the side of these affairs. One of these was the 1811 law giving the president authority to seize East Florida. The 12th Congress also voted to end the charter of the Bank of the United States. This was an exception to the gradual shift toward central power Adams documents in the Republican presidents Jefferson and Madison. Madison supported ending the bank as part of the leftover agenda of Jefferson’s presidency, but Madison would oversee its return a few years later.

It seems to me that Adams had moved to largely explaining the causes of the War of 1812. Looking ahead in the volume I see that most of the remaining pages is devoted to either the causes of that war, or its fighting. The final two or three years of Madison’s presidency are presented as an afterthought. I still think that Adams here is a pioneer of the U.S. in the world approach to history, careful to show how event events in Russia and Sweden (and at one point India) are shaping the decisions of American policy-makers. But, if we are brutally honest, the second half of Adams’ history is really a telling of the story of the War of 1812. The lesson of this volume is that the United States, by sustaining a delusion of its own importance, wasted a number of good years where it could have acted like the empire it was. In this way, Madison proved to be no different than Jefferson in refusing to admit its own imperial activities. Perhaps this comes from the Atlantic perspective of these presidents (and Adams as the author). I am not sure what Adams will say about Tecumseh and the Shawnee revolt, but we will see in the next volume. Perhaps we will find a more honest empire there.

Henry Adams: “History of the United States of America: During the Second Administration of Thomas Jefferson” (Part Two)

For a thousand years every step in the progress of England had been gained by sheer force of hand and will. In the struggle for existence the English people, favored by situation, had grown into a new human type,—which might be brutal, but was not weak; which had little regard for theory, but an immense and just respect for facts. America considered herself to be a serious fact, and expected England to take her at her own estimate of her own value; but this was more than could reasonably be asked. (978)

In volume four of Henry Adams’ history of the United States the major issue is foreign affair, and in particular, the rise and epic failure of Thomas Jefferson’s attempt at forced neutrality in the Napoleonic War, the Embargo Act. Adams believed that the failure of Jefferson’s foreign policy was America’s belief that it was more important to the world than they really were, more of an “established fact.” While, England and France were strong, established empires, the Americans were a passive force. “Jefferson and his government had shown over and over again that no provocation would make them fight; and from the moment that this attitude was understood, America became fair prey.” (978–979) Under the surface of this is the idea that Jefferson was both overstating his country’s importance (thinking that Europe could not afford to not trade with America) and underestimating its own power (by refusing to fight to defend its international position).

Adams also suggests that Jefferson misread the pulse of the American public in respect to British assaults on American sovereignty. While Jefferson invested all of his political capital on a forced peace through economic pressure, the people—much more honest about the nation’s imperial footing—was ready for war. The event that galvanized the public like never before was the attack by the British on the American ship “Chesapeake.” Only the force of his personality and his popularity seemed to hold back the tide of nationalistic exuberance among the people. The signs are there, in 1807, of a nation ready to project itself in the face of any insult, real or perceived. The embargo, may be read as yet another attempt by a closeted empire, but hiding it took every last bit of Jefferson’s ability and persuasive ability. He also had to put on a monarch’s cap, if only momentarily, to plug up the democratic energies calling for war.

Thus the embargo was imposed; and of all President Jefferson’s feats of political management, this was probably the most dexterous. On his mere recommendation, without warning, discussion, or publicity, and in silence as to his true reason and motives, he succeeded in fixing upon the country, beyond recall, the experiment of peaceable coercion. His triumph was almost a marvel; but no one could fail to see its risks. A free people required to know in advance the motives which actuated government, and the intended consequences of important laws. (1048)

Adams sums up the costs of the embargo, of which the economic costs—not insignificant—were not the most significant. The republican experiment, Jefferson’s revolution of 1800, was “paralyzed” by the Embargo, requiring as it did Jefferson’s silencing of the people. Morally, the nation was harmed by the rise of smuggling and illicit trade. “Every citizen was tempted to evade or defy the laws.” (1118) Personally, Jefferson suffered great harm to his popularity and reputation. “America began slowly to struggle, under the consciousness of pain, toward a conviction that she must bear the common burdens of humanity, and fight with the weapons of other races in the same bloody arena; that she could not much longer delude herself with hopes of evading the laws of Nature and instinct of life; and that her new statesmanship which made peace a passion could lead to not better result than had been reached by the barbarous system which made war a duty.” (1126) I for one, do nor mourn this lost innocence. The non-imperial republic a myth form the beginning, as the Iroquois knew too well when being shuffled to reservations in upstate New York, or as the North Africans learned in the Barbary Wars. In the face of these things, Jefferson’s presumption that Americans could stand above such power politics looks more and more disgusting.

So where does Adams place the United States at in 1809, at the end of Jefferson’s first term? His last annual message to Congress in 1808 is revealing. While much of it was devoted to defending the faltering and heavily opposed embargo, Jefferson himself was capable of visions of future greatness for the nation, including a national university. As intellectual as he was, I doubt that he would have proposed such a nationalist institution in 1800. Jefferson was awash in nationalism and a population eager for greatness. Perhaps the national university was what Jefferson could offer in lieu of war. His final year in office even saw a return of the Federalists to a position of informing and contesting the president’s designs. “Not even in 1798 had factiousness been so violent as in the last month of President Jefferson’s power.” Jefferson himself was deeply hurt by his loss of popularity. Like so many sensitive introverts, Jefferson longed for “sympathy and love” of others.

Another picture of Jefferson. This one seemed more aristocratic to me.

More to Adams’ main point, Jefferson had left the nation very different and in complete betrayal of his revolution. “Jefferson has hoped to make his country forever pure and free; to abolish war, with its train of debt, extravagance, corruption, and tyranny; to build up a government devoted only to useful and moral objects; to bring upon earth a new era of peace and good-will among men.” (1246) His own actions and the victory of his enemies in his final months suggested the end of this dream. My feeling, if not Adams, was that this was always a myth, purely in the mind of Jefferson and his followers. One cannot hope to use the power of the state to end tyranny or promote morality or bring peace. It can only do the opposite.

The second half of Adams’ history, covering the presidency of James Madison, we suspect will only deepen the failure of the revolution of 1800, but we will see in future posts.

Henry Adams: “History of the United States of America: During the Second Administration of Thomas Jefferson” (Part One)

[Indians] are combated by the habits of their bodies, prejudice of their minds, ignorance, pride, and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among them, who feel themselves something in the present order of things, and fear to become nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatever they did must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel, in their physical, oral, or political condition, is perilous innovate that their main duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety, and knowledge full of danger. In short, my friends, among them is seen the action and counter-action of good sense and bigotry they too have their anti-philosophers. (Thomas Jefferson, 606)

This—from Jefferson’s second inaugural address—is how a philosopher president justifies conquest.

In the third volume of his history of the United States from 1800 to 1817, Henry Adams continues to focus his attention on foreign affairs. In my last post, I dwelled on how the Louisiana Purchase (or Jefferson’s first term in general) oversaw the emergence of the United States as a self-denying but no less openly imperial nation. Of course, Jefferson would continue these denials throughout his presidency and the nation would follow his lead. There are still those who deny this brutal truth. Adams himself seems unaware that the events he was recounting were describing the rise of an imperial nation. In Jefferson’s second term he was forced to face this by forces much more honest than he was. The first challenge was Aaron Burr, who should be given credit for calling a spade a spade as he attempted to carve our his own little empire. The second challenge, to dominate Jefferson’s second term was the European empires who knew very well that the United States was in the game and refused to allow the United States to pretend to be a passive bystander. I will deal with the embargo crisis later. For now, I will focus on Adams’ account of Aaron Burr’s conspiracy.

The official reading of the Burr conspiracy is that Aaron Burr was attempting to create an independent nation in the frontier areas, in places controlled by Spain. Immediately this seems to be an interesting historical coincidence since this is almost exactly what the U.S. settlers in Texas did in the 1840s. In a sense, they were much worse than Burr, even brining the United States into a war with Mexico. Evidence that Burr was after a private empire was that he collected military forces for the expedition down the Mississippi and had a massive holding (40,000 acres). Burr’s point of view was that he was renting the land from Spain and just planned to work it. In that case, he would have been a predecessor to the Bonanza farms of the later nineteenth century. Although he claimed he was not treasonous, he never claimed that he was not after a private demesne, just that his would be legally defined by the typical language of capitalist exploitation.

Adams takes on the position of the government that Burr’s plan was a grandiose effort at creating an empire in the west, even going so far as to kidnap people in Washington in order to effect his scheme, if he could not get the required aid from Britain or Spain. Adams gives a detailed history of the conspiracy that is a quite a lively read, covering a handful of chapters. When the conspiracy finally fell apart, as such wild dreams almost must when not backed by the authority of the state, it is reworked too the interests of political power. Adams points out that the trial of Burr became more of a fight between Jefferson and his enemies than a dialog on the costs and consequences of expansion and conquest. In re-reading, I find Aaron Burr’s honesty about the nature of the game fascinating and refreshing.

Adams seems quote sympathetic to the rolling of civilization across the continent. This enthusiasm for empire (never called that) is a bit strange coming from the same man who praised the virtues of the Middle Ages against modern civilization. He was simply not equipped to look at the expansion west of the United States in anything but the language of Manifest Destiny. This is him on the Lewis and Clark expedition, which was apparently great except for its modesty.

Creditable as these expeditions were to American energy and enterprise, they added little to the stock of science or wealth. Many years must elapse before the vast region west of the Mississippi could be brought within the reach of civilization. The crossing of the continent was a great feat, but was nothing more. The French explorers had performed feats almost as remarkable; but, in 1805, the country they explored was still a wilderness. Great gains to civilization could be made only on the Atlantic coast under the protection of civilized life. For many years to come progress must still centre in the old thirteen State of the Union. (751—752)

What might a more honest republican empire had looked liked? Perhaps not much different. It may have faced the Napoleonic wars with more of a spirit of realpolitik. Perhaps it was this self-denial about empire that allowed Indians to sustain their autonomy as long as they did, but I doubt that. On the contrary, perhaps seeing Indians as colonial subjects, rather than people uncivilized by choice (as Jefferson’s inaugural stated) may have ensured a more honest and less destructive policy toward them. In any case, we still see shadows of Henry Adams when we read history textbooks today.