What is America? Poli 110J 04 High and Holy Principle.

What is America?Poli 110J 04

High and Holy Principle

Constitution of the United States of America

• 1787– Congress of the Confederation votes to begin plan

to revise/replace Articles of Confederation– Invite states to send delegates to Philadelphia

Convention (only RI refuses)– Contrary to Articles of Confederation, Art. VII says

that only 9 participating states need ratify the new Constitution for it to go into effect

– Adopted September 17, 1787


• What does it mean to “constitute”?• “We the People of the United States, in Order

to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”


• Legislature (Article I)– Broad powers over declaration of war, commerce

(foreign & interstate), law, currency, punishment, etc.


• House of Representatives• “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be

apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”– Changed by 13th & 14th amendment


• Senate• The Senate of the United States shall be

composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote– changed by 17th amendment to direct election

• Compromise between small and large states


• Executive– Commander-in-chief of armed forces– Appoint to offices– Grant pardons– Sees that laws are faithfully executed– Veto• Can be overridden by 2/3 majority of legislature


• Judiciary• Congress creates lower courts, but there must

be a Supreme Court• Lifetime appointment• Constitutional review– Constitution is “the supreme Law of the Land; and

the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding” (Art. 6)


• No amendment may affect slavery until 1808– Compromise to maintain unity

Bill of Rights

• Hamilton against, Jefferson in favor• Madison proposes Bill of Rights during

ratification process for Constitution 1789, ratified 1791– A compromise to keep the Constitution from

being derailed

Bill of Rights

• The case against: Hamilton in Fed. #84• “in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and

as they retain every thing they have no need of particular reservations.”

• “bills of rights… are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.”

Bill of Rights• The case for: Brutus in AF #84:• “The most important article in any Constitution may

therefore be repealed, even without a legislative act. Ought not a government, vested with such extensive and indefinite authority, to have been restricted by a declaration of rights? It certainly ought.”

• “So clear a point is this, that I cannot help suspecting that persons who attempt to persuade people that such reservations were less necessary under this Constitution than under those of the States, are wilfully endeavoring to deceive, and to lead you into an absolute state of vassalage.”

Bill of Rights

• Individualistic• Restrictive of the powers of government– Negative liberty

Bill of Rights

• 1. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Bill of Rights

• 2. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Bill of Rights

• 3 & 4: Security of property from the state– Protection from the quartering soldiers– Protection from unreasonable search & seizure

Bill of Rights

• 5-8 Governing arrest, trial, and punishment of crimes

Bill of Rights

• 9: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

• 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Authority

• The ability to speak finally– The Constitution is at the foundation of the United

States

Jacksonian Democracy

• Andrew Jackson– Hero of the Battle of New Orleans– President 1829-1837– Man of the [white] people• Bowed to the crowd at inauguration

– Promoter of more direct democracy– Removal of the Cherokee & Trail of Tears– Favored strong states rights, Union

John L. O’Sullivan

• Defining the American community of belief• Moral perfection and political exceptionality

of US national identity• Expansion of US is expansion of liberty• Liberty as a political good of the first order• States’ rights & strong sense of national

mission and identity

John L. O’Sullivan

• 1813-1895• Democratic party activist• Editor, literary critic, gov’t envoy to Portugal• Influential in van Buren, Pierce

administrations• Founder, editor-in-Chief of United States

Magazine & Democratic Review

United States Magazine & Democratic Review

• “Politico-literary” journal• Nationalist project of culture• Helped to launch Nathaniel Hawthorne,

Herman Melville, Walt Whitman to prominence

• Central to “Young America”– Nationalism, democracy, expansion

The Nation as Crusade

• The “high and holy” democratic/voluntary principle (“Introduction”)– “the fundamental element of [America’s] new

social and political system” • Defining America

– “The best government is that which governs least”– “Let man be fettered by no duty, save

His brother’s right—like his, inviolable”


• A community of belief– “full and free profession of the cardinal principles

of political faith on which we take our stand”– “true and living faith”


• US exceptional, world-historical importance• “All history has to be re-written; political

science and the whole scope of all moral truth have to be considered and illustrated in the light of the democratic principle. All old subjects of thought and all new questions arising, connected more or less directly with human existence, have to be taken up again and re-examined in this point of view.”


• The advent of the United States is a discontinuous break with history– Transforms not only the future, but also the past– Forces reinterpretation of all that has come

before and that will come– Analogous to birth of Christ


• The American interest = the universal interest– Voluntary principle = democracy = United States =

“the cause of all mankind”


• Defining the community:• What about slavery?– Vague commitment to eventual extinction of slavery– slavery was “not a political” problem, “but a moral

and economic one, the decision of which must rest, voluntarily, with the slave states themselves.”

– Matter of intrastate commerce, not rights (Democratic Review 14, 4/44, p. 429)


• Defining the community:• What about slavery?– Union composed of states, not individuals– Illegitimate to compel change in status quo– Would violate democratic principle


• Liberty > Equality– To be treated as an equal, one must be capable of

self-rule. – Some can, some can’t:– “According to their knowledge of, and respect for, the

rights of a citizen, shall their freedom from governmental restraints be measured out to them, and every privilege which they learn to exercise wisely, government will be forced to relinquish, until each man becomes a law unto himself.” (“Territorial Aggrandizement”)

The Nation as Crusade• To be considered an equal, one must first become free– Anglo-Saxon culture (not biology) makes whites most

capable of freedom• Until then, it is fair to regard the un-free individual as

an inferior– Slaves are made incapable of being free because the

brutality w/which they are treated has made them brute– Natives cannot be free because of their savagery &

primitiveness– Mexicans can’t be free because they are “semi-

barbarous”, have an aristocratic Spanish culture. They may one day be educated enough that they can be free.


• To forcibly annex Mexico would make a mockery of the voluntary principle

• It would also taint the US w/people who were not prepared to rule themselves

• Thus, Mexico should be left alone (he changed his mind)


• “The Great Nation of Futurity”– “we have, in reality, but little connection with the

past history of any [other nations], and still less with antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history.”• America is new, morally pure, and unstained by sins of

the past• A radical break from the past


• “America is destined for better deeds. It is our unparalleled glory that we have no reminisces of battle fields, but in defence of humanity, of the oppressed of all nations, of the rights of personal conscience, the rights of personal enfranchisement.”– America acts with pure motives, in the interest of

all mankind by definition


• “We have no interest in the scenes of antiquity, only as lessons of avoidance of nearly all their examples. The expansive future is our arena, and for our history. We are entering on its untrodden space, with the truths of God in our minds, beneficent objects in our hearts, and with a clear conscience unsullied by the past. “


• The old, the past is to be repudiated• For Americans, the only history that matters is

future history– It is not what we have been or what we have done

that makes us who we are, but what we will do and who we will be

• Americans are a people who are unmarked by sin

60 seconds of theology

• What is sin?– Not being a bad person– Not doing bad things (individual sins)

• In Christian thought, the taint of original sin is a state of moral imperfection. – A person can be very good and still be stained by sin.– Makes forgiveness necessary– Separates humans from God

• For O’Sullivan, America is beyond sin


• “We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can. We point to the everlasting truth on the first page of our national declaration, and we proclaim to the millions of other lands, that ‘the gates of hell—the powers of aristocracy and monarchy—’ shall not prevail against it.”


• America’s purpose, its telos is to spread democracy throughout the world– Telos: A purpose that is part of a things nature,

forming what it is• America is providentially destined to succeed

in this mission. Failure is impossible.• Voluntary principle = democracy = United

States = “the cause of all mankind” = The will of God


• The enemies of the United States and democracy are enemies not only of all mankind, but of God– They are intrinsically evil, satanic

• “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”– Matthew 16:18– Refers to the Christian church– America, embodying the will of God, is the new

church– By definition, the United States is a force of pure good

and its enemies agents of pure moral and religious evil


• Because the American interest is identical with the universal human interest and the will of God, everything done in the name of the American interest is by definition good, acting to promote freedom and democracy

• By the same token, every opponent of the American interest is by definition an enemy of God and all mankind


• “no lust for territory has stained our annals. No nation has been despoiled by us, no country laid desolate, no people overrun.”– The indigenous would probably disagree.– But, they cannot for O’Sullivan be free, and thus

are removed from consideration. Where they were, democracy will be.


• New York Morning News, Dec. 27, 1845:• “To state the truth at once in its neglected simplicity,

we are free to say that were the respective arguments and cases of the two parties, as to all these points of history and law, reversed—had England all ours, and we nothing but hers—our claim to Oregon would still be best and strongest. And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”


• Manifest Destiny: manifest here means “made apparent, revealed, obvious”. Fated by Providence (the will of God) to spread across continent

• America’s moral & religious right and mission are prior to any existing legal claim.

The Nation as Crusade• “All this will be our future history, to establish on earth

the moral dignity and salvation of man—the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?” (Great Nation of Futurity)


• The US is chosen by God for “blessed mission to spread the life-giving light of truth (democracy) to the world– America does not have a mission, it IS a mission. It

must redeem the world.

• Messianic Nation: Redeeming people of other nations, raising them to dignity of humans from bestial condition

What is America? Poli 110J 04 High and Holy Principle.

Documents

new constitution

large states

proposed constitution

participating states

unity slide

derailed slide

bill of rights hamilton

majority of legislature