American History Revised (28 page)

Olmsted related an encounter with a Northern gentleman on a Mississippi riverboat steamer, talking about a conference of Southerners he had recently attended: “They believed the South the centre of Christianity and the hope of the world, while they had not the slightest doubt that the large majority of the people of the North were much more to be pitied than their own negroes.”

Obviously, one of the legacies of slavery was to cause Southerners to sink into a dream world, devoid of reality. In 1994 America’s most prominent Afro-American pointed to this truth. At a time when he was touted as a potential presidential candidate, General Colin Powell was asked by
Newsweek
what advice he would give young blacks. He counseled “young blacks not to let racism be
their
problem: ‘Let it be a problem to someone else. You can’t change it. Don’t have a chip on your shoulder, and don’t think everyone is staring at you because you’re black….Let it drag them down.’”

1774
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia, honors a brave World War I soldier of unknown identity. In the Old Cadet Chapel at West Point is another memorial for a brave soldier who fought for his country in the American Revolution. His plaque, too, is nameless.

But we know who he was.

The 1774 Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the American Revolution, won in large part by the extraordinary bravery of one general who “turned likely defeat into momentous victory.” He fell wounded, and today that spot is marked by a monument hailing him as “The Most Brilliant Soldier of the Continental Army.” Had the man died, his name would have entered the annals of America’s greatest generals. But unfortunately he lived.

Lying in the hospital for weeks with a
leg badly fractured by a musket ball, he seethed with fury that all the glory went to General Horatio Gates, who got a special medal from Congress while he got nothing. Angry at his fellow Americans for failing to give him what he considered his due, and unable to recognize that it was his arrogance and personal vanity that made people dislike him, he sought recognition from others—like the British. Today the name Benedict Arnold is associated with treason.

1776
July 2: Up for ratification by the thirteen colonies was the resolution declaring independence. For ratification to pass, seven out of the thirteen had to approve. For a colony to approve, a majority of delegates was required. But in reality, a simple majority of delegates and colonies was not enough; the vote for a move so bold had to be unanimous. Nothing less would do.

Back in June, Thomas Jefferson had learned that six colonies were likely to vote no. If one of the seven likely “yes” colonies changed its vote, the independence movement would be dead in the water. With a month to go, it was essential to garner more support.

On July 1, the day before the showdown, the Continental Congress took a trial vote and concluded that a positive movement was well under way: the vote in favor was now 9–2, with one tie and one abstention. The two colonies ready to vote negative were Pennsylvania and South Carolina, the colony tied was Delaware, and the colony abstaining was New York. With twenty-four hours left to go, the independence supporters, led by Samuel Adams and John Adams of Massachusetts, put the pressure on the recalcitrants led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania.

How one would have loved to be “a fly on the wall”! But alas, there were no “leaks” in those days, no self-justifying journals by the protagonists. All we know—and some of these stories may be apocryphal—is the following:

• When John Hancock said, “We must all hang together,” Benjamin Franklin responded, “Yes. We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately!” Adding to the drama was the giant Benjamin Harrison of Virginia (father and great-grandfather of U.S. presidents), a bull of a man at six feet four inches and 240 pounds. He picked up the diminutive Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts (later vice president of the United States under Madison), deposited him on a chair, and shouted, “With me, it [hanging] will all be over in a minute. But you, you’ll be dancing on air an hour after I’m gone.”
  

• Caesar Rodney, back home in Delaware, hearing he was needed immediately
  within twenty-four hours, outdid Paul Revere and rode the eighty miles on horseback to Philadelphia to arrive just in time to cast the tie-breaking vote that tipped Delaware into the independence column, two votes to one.
  

• In an act of remarkable magnanimity, the two Pennsylvania delegates most opposed, John Dickinson and Robert Morris, abstained from voting so as to enable the three pro-independence delegates to carry the state, three votes to two (out of a total of seven).
  

• The youngest delegate, twenty-six-year-old Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, persuaded his brother-in-law Thomas Middleton to sign, thus putting the pressure on the other two delegates to switch their votes.
  

• When an alarming message arrived from George Washington, reporting that the British were about to attack New York, the state’s four delegates, deadlocked but fearing being abandoned, finally went along.
  

The final vote of the thirteen colonies on that pivotal day: 13–0. Even the delegates themselves were stunned by their achievement. It was a day, wrote John Adams, that “ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

Still to be resolved were some disputes over the wording of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. It wasn’t until two days later that the final document was ready. In celebrating their July Fourth national holiday,
*
Americans are really celebrating the miracle that took place between July first and July second.

1783
The concept of a unified nation took many years to catch hold. The English made sure of that by insisting, as a last-minute demand before recognizing independence in 1783, that the thirteen colonies be listed individually under the country name “United States of America.” Says historian Don Cook, “The English diplomats believed this would convey that these were not truly
united
states and that England had not yet relinquished those last connections in the capitals once ruled by royal governors.” To make sure
the rebels got the message, the British foreign minister refused to send an envoy to the infant republic, saying he could not afford to send thirteen.

True to form, the new country behaved like a collection of squabbling states and unclaimed territories, all with different ideas of liberty and equality. For example, in New Jersey but nowhere else, women had the right to vote. In some states, a black man counted as three-fifths of a person in calculating population and number of seats in the House of Representatives; in other states, he counted not at all.

Disagreements among the states were frequent and occasionally bitter enough to provoke talk of secession, new constitutions, and independent nation-states. During the wrangling over the proposed Jay Treaty of 1795, New Jersey and other states threatened to secede if the treaty was not ratified; that the treaty eventually got the necessary two-thirds majority, but just barely, was due only to heavy lobbying by President Washington. During the War of 1812, public opinion in support of the war was so weak in New England that the governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island flatly refused to call their state militias into national service. New England politicians got together for a convention in Hartford in 1814, talked of potential secession, and agreed to lend no more money to the national government. The founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital and a leading figure of the day, a holder of several university honorary degrees, proposed a new constitution for the United States that would recast the map and exclude any people living in the area defined by the Louisiana Purchase.

Unlike the first thirty years of the republic, when the predominant issue had been one of national independence and coexistence with powerful European nations, the major issue after Andrew Jackson became president in 1828 was one of continental expansion. This was a divisive issue, revealing sectional and state loyalties that far overrode national patriotism.

The defining moment of national unity came only in 1863 when Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, advocating “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Until the Civil War, the United States had been a collection of states and territories, all with different laws regarding equality and liberty. The name of the country before Gettysburg was usually expressed as a plural: “The United States
are
a free country.” After Gettysburg it finally became a singular: “The United States
is
a free country.”

Observes the historian Marcus Cunliffe, “America became a nation legally before it was one emotionally.” Born of a revolution and more loyal to their particular state or region than to their country, Americans needed almost one hundred years and a
civil war before they could think of themselves as one nation. Even as late as 1860, people were coming up with all kinds of strange ideas about how to organize the states. The commanding general of the United States armies and 1852 presidential candidate, Winfield Scott, sent a memo to President Buchanan (with a copy to president-elect Lincoln): “Views Suggested by the Imminent Danger of a Disruption of the Union by the Secession of One or More of the Southern States.” In this memo Scott proposed, as a lesser evil to war, that the United States reorganize itself into four countries: the Eastern Northern States, the Old South, the Middle West, and the Far West. Obviously, for such a preposterous notion to be suggested, people did not have much confidence in the concept of a single, unified country.

1789
When James Madison sat down in 1789 to draft amendments to the Constitution to reassure the thirteen colonies that they would not be overwhelmed by the power of the proposed new central government, his first order of business was religion. More than the right to bear arms, trial by jury, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, religion was an issue that had to be dealt with forcefully. Out of Madison’s proclamations on religion came even broader freedoms. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, written by Madison, guarantees not only separation of church and state but also the freedom to worship, freedom of speech and press, and the right to assemble.