GOVT 2665: Final Quotes

“Nothing is more in conflict with the genius of American institutions than legal distinctions between individuals based upon race or upon occupation. The framers of our Constitution believed in the safety and wisdom of adherence to abstract principles. They meant that their laws should make no distinction between men except such as were required by personal conduct and character…”

1. George Frisbee Hoar

2. Laws should not distinguish between people by “race or occupation,” only by “personal conduct and character”

   1. Declaration is universal, group-based discrimination contradicts “the genius of American institutions”

   2. Chinese exclusion betrays the founding principle

3. Echos Douglass’s “Composite Nation”

   1. Declaration-centered readings of Lincoln and Douglass

“I am one of those who believe that either the Anglo-Saxon race will possess the Pacific slope or the Mongolian race will possess it.”

1. James (Slater or George)

2. Two races cannot coexist on the Pacific coast, “Either the Anglo-Saxon race will possess the Pacific slope or the Mongolian race will possess it”

   1. Immigration is an invasion and competition

   2. Individual rights vs group conflict

3. New way of thinking about race, based on social darwinism

   1. Opposite of Hoar and rejects Douglass

   2. Survival of the fittest

“It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world’s future… There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the great pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history - the final competition of the races, for the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled… What if it should be God’s plan to people the world with better and finer material?”

1. Josiah Strong, Our Country

2. Anglo-Saxon providential destiny and the “final competition of the races”

   1. Fuses Christianity with Social Darwinism

   2. Population pressure will drive a global contest and the Anglo-Saxons will prevail

   3. Gives racial supremacy a religious mission and justifies expansion past the frontier

3. Connects to Carnegie, survival of the fittest

   1. Connects to Turner’s frontier closing anxiety

“Shall the American people continue their restless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind? Have we no mission to perform - no duty to discharge to our fellow-man?”

1. Albert Beveridge, “March of the Flag”

2. The nation should continue its “restless march toward commercial supremacy”

   1. Imperialism is not a betrayal of American principles but a fulfillment

   2. Extends manifest destiny overseas, joining economic motives and moral purpose

3. Pairs with Strong: supports the racial theory

   1. Opposed by Hill and Hoar

   2. Tension with the Declaration: governing Filipinos without consent violates the consent to be governed

   3. Is expansion an extension or negation of American liberty?

“This constitutional idea of the limited powers of government, and this alone, is really antithetical to Imperialism, whose watchword is unlimited power. Imperialism does not inquire or exhort, it commands and compels. It wants nothing of its subject but abject submission and obedience. He is not, in its conception, a constituent of the State. He possesses no inherent rights. He can claim as his rights only what government accords to him.”

1. David Jayne Hill, Americanism: What is it?

2. The “constitutional idea of the limited powers of government” is “antithetical to Imperialism”

   1. The subject “is ot a constituent of the State” and has “no inherent rights”

   2. In American constitutionalism, rights are inherent, and government is constituted by the people

   3. Defines “Americanism” as constitutional limits and inherent rights, so an empire is un-American

3. Contrasts with Beveridge on whether expansion fulfills or betrays American principles

   1. Can a constitutional republic hold an empire without becoming what it opposes?

“In the course of the past century hundreds of thousands and millions actually sought and attained this goal [class mobility], and it brought them emancipation from the oppression of capitalism, emancipated in the fullest sense of the word: their goal was a free homestead in the unsettled West. I believe that the fact supplying the principle reason for the characteristic peaceable mood of the American worker is that many men with sounds limbs and no capital or hardly any were able to turned themselves into independent farmers almost as they wished by colonizing free land.”

1. Werner Sombart, Why is there No Socialism in America?

2. The American worker is “peaceable” because many could escape wage labor by acquiring a free homestead in the West

   1. Class mobility and available land meant discontent could be resolved by moving, rather than collective organization

      1. The “safety valve” idea

   2. Explanation of American exceptionalism and why we don’t have a major socialist party like in Europe

3. Strong: the closing of the frontier is the pressure point for populism and imperial expansion

   1. Goodwyn: contrasts

“Populism was first and most centrally, a cooperative movement that imparted a sense of self-worth to individual people and that provided them with the instruments of self-education about the world they lived in. The movement gave them hope—a shared hope—that they were not impersonal victims of a gigantic industrial engine ruled by others but that they were, instead, people who could perform specific acts of self-determination. The movement taught its participants who they were and what their rights were and the people of the movement thereupon created its program and its strategy… Populism was, at bottom, a movement of ordinary Americans to gain control over their own lives and futures.”

1. Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populism Moment in America

2. Populism was a cooperative movement that gave ordinary people “self-worth” and “instruments of self-education” so they became agents and not “impersonal victims of a gigantic industrial engine”

   1. The Farmers’ Alliance cooperatives teach members who they were and what their rights were, then the program could grow from the people

   2. Treats Populism as a genuinely democratic “movement of ordinary Americans”

3. Rejects Hofstadter’s reading of Populists as nostalgic or irrational

   1. Contrasts with Ward, who emphasizes social intelligence rather than popular self-organization

“Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity…. We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.”

1. National People’s Party Platform

2. Claims to restore government to “the plain people” and has “identical” purposes with the Constitution’s preamble

   1. Claims Constitutional legitimacy

   2. When concentrated economic power is a threat, public power is the remedy

   3. Breaks with limited government tradition and justifies public ownership with regulation of railroads, currency, and credit

3. Contrasts with Thoreau and Hill who treat limited power as a safeguard

   1. Roosevelt and Wilson take up similar regulation

   2. Uses the Declaration/Constitution as an authority

“If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

1. William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold”

2. The gold standard crushes debtors and producers, producerism and free silver against the gold standard

   1. “Producers” are farmers, laborers, and commercial interests

   2. Moral fight with religious imagery

   3. Unites Populist demands within the Democractic Party and frames the election as producers vs financial elites

3. Compare with Carnegie: Bryan rejects the market outcomes, Carnegie calls natural law

“The People's Party will settle the race question. (697) My opinion is that the future happiness of the two races will never be assured until the political motives which drive them asunder, into two distinct and hostile factions, can be removed. There must be a new policy inaugurated, whose purpose is to allay the passions and prejudices of race conflicts and which makes its appeal to the sober sense and honest judgment of the citizen regardless of his color. (696) Now the people’s party say to these two men[the white and Black tenant] "You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.” (698) This is so obviously true it is no wonder both these unhappy laborers stop to listen. No wonder they begin to realize that no change of law can benefit the white tenant which does not benefit the black one likewise; that no system which now does injustice to one of them can fail to injure both. Their every material interest is identical. The moment this becomes a conviction, mere selfishness, the mere desire to better their conditions, escape onerous taxes, avoid usurious charges, lighten their rents, or change their precarious tenements into smiling, happy homes, will drive these two men together, just as their mutually inflamed prejudices now drive them apart. (698)”

1. Thomas Watson, “The Negro Question in the South”

2. Biracial class alliance against elite manipulation

   1. White and Black tenants are “kept apart that [they] may be separately fleeced.” Racial hatred is “the keystone of the arch of financial despotism.”

   2. “Every material interest is identical,” so self-interest should drive them together

   3. Claims the People’s Party can solve the race question by changing the economic motive for division

3. Contrast with Du Bois and Douglass: Watson appeals to shared material interests, not social equality or the Declaration