On the Republic for Which It Stands

This is, by far, the most depressing text in the Oxford History of the United States series. There is nobody to root for. I think I speak for most Americans when I say that, in earlier periods, it becomes easy to support this or that side of the political spectrum. In The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, it becomes easy to celebrate the triumph of George Washington and the founding of the United States. In Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, I found myself on the side of the Federalists until their turn toward nativism in the late 1790s before they imploded in an attempt to segregate their aristocratic supporters from the rest of American society. In What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848, seeing the Whigs rise and attempt to establish the American system was such a pleasure. Although the Whigs’ system of government lost power to the Democrats by the end of the period, there’s a lot to hope for. Finally, in Battle Cry of Freedom, there is little that is more satisfying than reading about Sherman and Grant’s agonizing crushing of the Confederacy, alongside the passage of the 13th Amendment and the emancipation of all enslaved peoples.

Here, there is nothing like that.

While Reconstruction was, in many ways, the Second American Revolution under Radical Republicans and African American supporters, the Republican Party lost its spine towards the end of Grant’s administration, and it effectively gave up on the South. At the same time, in the West, the party that could have been the vehicle to fulfill Jefferson’s [hypocritical] promise in the Declaration of Independence jettisoned its egalitarian bent and opted instead to crush Native Americans and aid settlers. It also became remarkably corrupt on a national scale, in large part due to the marriage between western expansion and railroad plutocracy. Instead of the grand reforms that the Republican Party pursued throughout the 1850s and 1860s, the opted for the modest goal of liberal prosperity—something that they were utterly unable to achieve.

On the other side, the Democratic Party had few redeeming features. Former Confederates in the South engineered a reign of terror against newly liberated and enfranchised African American community (which made up more than half of the population in Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) while working class political machines emerged in northern cities, bringing about a new age in urban corruption.

The political debates that America faced in the first half of the 19th century devolved into meaningless bickering over the gold standard, civil service reform, and tariffs. While these issues were important, they suggest an overarching satisfaction with the status quo—a satisfaction that they had no right to maintain. At the same time, partisan splits were as vitriolic as ever, but the stakes just seem so much lower. Outside a few characters, there is nowhere near the same stature held by late 19th century political leaders as their earlier predecessors. Moreover, the situation in the country seemed bleak everywhere—labor standards collapsed, to the point where strikes and riots became a perennial object; white terrorism facilitated the construction of the Jim Crow South; urbanization brought about lives of squalor for working-class citizens and immigrants; mass atrocities were committed against Asians and Native Americans. This all can be hard to read at times.

I’m not sure if it’s a result of the period or of White’s writing style, but this book can be harder to follow than other texts in the series. The political debates gave me some degree of whiplash, and White’s narrative predominantly follows the situation of Northern cities. This is fair, given that they are the subject of most studies on the late-nineteenth century United States, but I can’t help but feel that the book would have better off if a bit more attention was given to the rural North, the South, and the West. To paraphrase Stephan Thernstrom, no place is a microcosm of the United States, but readers might get the impression that occurrences in Chicago and New York are representative of the entire country in the period at hand.

While I wait for Bruce Schulman’s Reawakened Nation: The Birth of Modern America, 1896-1929, I’ll have to move forward and then circle back. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 is next.