INTRODUCTION | 5 | Aspects of American History | Simon Henderson

ABSTRACT

At the conclusion of a trip to Washington DC in the summer of 2007 I was driven to the airport by an Ethiopian taxi driver. He was a US resident who hoped to apply for citizenship in the future. When I asked him why he had moved to America, leaving family behind in his homeland, he spoke of the promise of a better life. The United States, he asserted, gave him the chance to earn money and live his life in safety and freedom. He was not naive or overly idealistic, he talked about the difﬁculties of his daily existence, problems of healthcare and racial prejudice, but maintained that America was a better place. The concept of America as a better place is central to the foundation

myth of the nation. From the beginning it has consciously struggled to realise exceptionalism. This American promise and the effort to extend it to all peoples in the United States are at the core of my fascination with the history of the nation and provide a central focus for this volume. Readers who wish to explore a narrative of American history will

not be satisﬁed by the pages that follow. Aspects of American History – as the title suggests – focuses on speciﬁc features of American history. The central themes tying these different aspects together are race, citizenship and American national identity. Although it is true that the development of an ‘Americanness’ has been constructed through a cultural exchange between various ethnic groups, it is also clear that American national identity has, at various times in the nation’s past, not embraced racial diversity. The Declaration of Independence to a large extent commits America to a ‘civic nationalism’, a shared set of principles and beliefs promoting democracy and freedom bound together by the ideal that all men share equality and liberty. A ‘racial nationalism’ which saw American identity in terms of ethnic difference has, however, at various times, competed with this civic nationalism. The Constitution, for example, enshrined one facet of racial nationalism by

endorsing and protecting slavery.1 The extent to which citizenship, and consequently full inclusion in the American nation, has been denied to varying racial groups is a major focus of many of the chapters that follow. The struggle over the parameters of that citizenship impacted signiﬁcantly on the development of an American identity. American nationalism was also constructed by internal political

conﬂicts about how best to pursue the self-governing experiment. This nationalism did not emerge complete once the shackles of British imperialism had been thrown off. Instead it developed slowly as the nation grew. Inﬂuenced by an extremely self-conscious American exceptionalism, the United States was shaped by competing interpretations of the legacy of the American Revolution and how to protect it. These interpretations included rival opinions on the place of ethnic minorities in America and where the boundaries of citizenship should be drawn. In the early twenty-ﬁrst century the US still contends with the consequences of this important aspect of its past. It is in this context that the themes of race, citizenship and national identity provide the threads which weave the essays in this book together. This book does not provide an exhaustive survey of all areas of the

American past that can be connected to these themes; there are obvious omissions. Furthermore, I am aware that the important place played by class and gender in the emergence of a national identity are not covered in the pages that follow. The reader is reminded, however, that this volume focuses only on certain aspects of the American past. The principal intention is to introduce students and the general reader to the main interpretations of these different aspects in relation to the central themes of the book. Whilst the work is set out chronologically and can certainly be read in this fashion, each essay also stands alone. Students are encouraged to use these essays as assistance when preparing to write a paper or participate in a seminar discussion. The references and bibliography provide ample pointers towards more in-depth discussion of the issues being explored. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the shaping of the United States from the

colonial period through to the American Revolution. Discussion centres on the extent to which the concept of an American people was forged out of the cultural and ethnic diversity of colonial America. The question of why the colonies decided to break from British control is also considered. The values and hopes of those who supported independence help us to understand how the United States conceived of itself in its formative years. Chapter 3 analyses the process which led to the ratiﬁcation of the Constitution and contends that it was this document that played a crucial role in the development of American

nationalism. Furthermore, the Constitution and its interpretation in relation to race and citizenship are recurring themes throughout this volume. One of the glaring contradictions in the American founding is the

presence of slavery. The revolt against the British was framed as a struggle for liberty against tyranny; the Americans were not prepared to be shackled by their imperial slave-masters. As men who were created equal they believed in their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet many of the leaders who spoke so eloquently in favour of independence were themselves slave-holders. Chapter 4 explores the relationship between slavery and two of the nation’s founding giants, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Discussion focuses on their attitude to the tensions between human bondage and the American ideal and how historians have represented their records in this area. Chapter 5 provides an examination of the role of political parties in

the early republic. The essay explores how these parties provided a rallying point for different interest groups and how political participation and campaign ceremony helped forge a national political identity. The main focus of this chapter, as the title indicates, is the extent to which party-spirit was dangerous for the American nation. The extent to which political groups could contain the issue of slavery provides a link to Chapter 6, which investigates the causes of the American Civil War. This chapter seeks to explain the extent to which slavery was the primary cause of America’s seminal military experience. Links can be made between this essay and Chapter 7, which looks at Southern and Confederate nationalism. As well as exploring a further element of Civil War causation, this chapter seeks to discover the extent to which American nationalism was fractured in the antebellum period. With slavery as a major inﬂuence, many southern leaders argued that their region represented a separate nation before, during and after the Civil War. Chapters 8 through 10 focus on the impact of the Civil War on

concepts of liberty, racial equality and national identity. Through an examination of Lincoln’s ideas and policies during the Civil War, Chapter 8 seeks to explore the extent to which he effected a change in the meaning of the nation. The ‘new birth of freedom’ he spoke of during the Gettysburg address and his moral reading of the Constitution indicated a changing interpretation of that document. Chapter 9 focuses on the extent to which such a change impacted on the lives of African-Americans in the postbellum period. Reconstruction saw signiﬁcant advances for black southerners and an expanding

concept of citizenship. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were eventually eroded as Reconstruction stalled; however, a more liberal interpretation of their meaning in the 1950s and 1960s breathed life into the civil rights movement. Chapter 10 looks at the way the memory of the Civil War has been contested in American memory and the impact this has had on national identity. Chapter 11 focuses on the emergence of legally codiﬁed racial seg-

regation in the American South. It shows the way in which the promises of Reconstruction were turned back and how the nation retreated from a racially inclusive memory of the Civil War. The essay has obvious connections with Chapters 9 and 10 but it also lays the historical context for discussions of black protest and the civil rights movement which appear later in the volume. As Jim Crow segregation descended over the South, in the West the last Native Americans were being moved onto reservations. Chapter 12 highlights the mixture of paternalism and prejudice in policies towards the Indians either side of the turn of the twentieth century. Both chapters explore the limits of citizenship in relation to racial identity. Chapter 13 moves from the discussion of Native American experience in the previous essay to focus on the way the West has been represented in popular imagination and historical interpretation. The chapter provides a historiographical survey of the place of the West in American national identity. A crucial element of this identity has been forged in the immigrant

heritage of the nation. America’s foundation myth is built on the belief that the country is chosen; it is exceptional and offers a haven from the corruptions of the Old World. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty welcomes the ‘huddled masses, yearning to breathe free’. Chapter 14 explores American attitudes towards immigration and assimilation and what this tells us about the parameters of citizenship. The chapter closes with a brief discussion of contemporary immigration patterns and the challenge for the American future. Chapter 15 focuses on the struggle by women to gain the vote from

the period of Reconstruction through to the early twentieth century. Their citizenship was not as comprehensive as that of their male counterparts. It is incorrect, however, to frame the struggle for the vote in traditional feminist terms. Racial identity played a crucial role in women’s political struggles in this period and the chapter examines the interplay between both race and gender in the campaign for the vote and the ways in which the boundaries of citizenship were drawn. Chapters 16, 17 and 18 focus on the struggle by African-Americans

to achieve equality of opportunity in the United States. The experience of black people runs throughout this volume. Chapter 16 explores the

ways in which the foundations were laid for the civil rights movements of the 1960s and argues that such a movement should not be conceived of in limited chronological terms. Chapter 17 looks at the policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and their contribution to the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. The most inﬂuential black leaders of this ‘Second Reconstruction’ and beyond were Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Chapter 18 explores their legacies and relevance within the context of the contemporary problems of black America. Chapters 19 and 20 brieﬂy discuss the role of American foreign

policy in the formation of national identity. The American foundation myth makes a clear distinction between the United States and the rest of the world and an examination of America’s role in global conﬂicts reveals much about the nation’s sense of itself. Chapter 19 discusses how America approached involvement in the First and Second World Wars and the conﬂict in Vietnam and what this reveals about America’s sense of mission. Chapter 20 explores similar themes in relation to the events of 9/11 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ which led the nation into the war in Iraq. This chapter also looks at the way in which those conﬂicts have promoted an increasingly prescriptive patriotism and citizenship.