Top Banner
What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 “We shall be as a city upon a hill”
27

What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Mar 27, 2015

Download

Documents

Mason Gray
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Page 1: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

What is America?Poli 110J 2.3

“We shall be as a city upon a hill”

Page 2: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

3 Visions of America

• Winthrop: A City on a Hill– The obligations of a chosen people

• Webster: National People, National Power– The supremacy of federal government

• Calhoun: States’ Rights & White Supremacy– Liberty & slavery

Page 3: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (starting 1629)

• Puritan• Theocracy Democracy• Puritans like Winthrop extremely influential on

NE political culture• “A Model of Christian Charity” is a sermon,

containing common Puritan religious and political ideas.

Page 4: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• The community is based in shared belief– “Ye are the body of Christ and members of their

part. All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other's strength and infirmity; joy and sorrow, weal and woe. If one member suffers, all suffer with it, if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.”• To be virtuous religiously is to be responsible both to

God and the community

Page 5: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• The community is held to a set of transcendental standards, expressed in a text, accessible to all, that must nonetheless be interpreted– Note that the argument is grounded in and

reinforced by citations from the Bible

Page 6: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• Puritan religious standards render all members of the community morally equal– “From hence it appears plainly that no man is

made more honorable than another or more wealthy etc., out of any particular and singular respect to himself, but for the glory of his Creator and the common good of the creature, man.”

Page 7: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• The community is grounded in covenant.• “We are entered into covenant with Him for

this work. We have taken out a commission… Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it”

Page 8: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• An exceptional status on the world stage• “For we must consider that we shall be as a

city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

Page 9: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John Winthrop

• Exceptionality, cont’d• “We shall open the mouths of enemies to

speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.”

Page 10: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Daniel Webster• Towering figure in the Senate in first half of 19th

century, a Whig nationalist– Secretary of State under Harrison, Tyler

• Wanted to preserve the Union, brokered a number of compromises to do so

• Massachusetts• 2nd Reply to Hayne spontaneous (Jan. 1830).

Against proposal in SC to nullify protective Tariff of 1828– Only Federal gov’t can set foreign trade policies.

Page 11: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Daniel Webster

• Is the Union the creation of the states?– Hint: no. Rather, the national people created both

the states and the federal government• The greatest power must rest with the national

government:– “It is, Sir, the people's Constitution, the people's

government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that the Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the proposition, or dispute their authority.”

Page 12: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Daniel Webster

• The people = the nation– “the State legislatures, as political bodies,

however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people. So far as the people have given the power to the general government, so far the grant is unquestionably good, and the government holds of the people, and not of the State governments.”

Page 13: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Daniel Webster• Supremacy of the national gov’t:• “No State law is to be valid which comes in conflict

with the Constitution, or any law of the United States passed in pursuance of it. But who shall decide this question of intereference? To whom lies the last appeal? This, Sir, the Constitution itself decides also, by declaring, "That the judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States." These two provisions cover the whole ground. They are, in truth, the keystone of the arch! With these it is a government; without them it is a confederation.”

Page 14: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Daniel Webster

• The state preserves liberty, which cannot exist without it– “Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and

inseparable!”

Page 15: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun• "the Union, next to our liberty, the most dear."• From South Carolina, endorsed SC’s position in

nullification crisis.• Federal gov’t becoming tyrannical, infringing on

Const’l rights of the states• Champion of the South, states’ rights in Senate,

1st half 19th C. Major figure in antebellum Democratic party– VP Under J.Q. Adams, Jackson; Sec. of War under

Monroe“Slavery a Positive Good” – Feb. 6, 1837

Page 16: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Broke with Jackson beginning with Force Act (gave federal gov’t right to use force to enforce the tariff)– Jackson supported states’ rights, but thought

Union threatened by nullification

Page 17: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Strong states’ rights– “The subject [slavery] is beyond the jurisdiction of

Congress - they have no right to touch it in any shape or form, or to make it the subject of deliberation or discussion. . . .”• Exactly what powers were and were not ceded to the

Federal government in the Constitution?

Page 18: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Right to secession• People in non-slave states soon “will have

been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one-half of this Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained towards another. It is easy to see the end. By the necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we must become, finally, two people.”

Page 19: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Southern partisan:– “We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our

institutions.”

• The South feels that the federal government is a tool of the Northern, anti-slave faction. They see it as hostile and oppressive.

Page 20: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Slavery: something for everyone• For (elite) whites: freedom from labor leads to

greater accomplishments:– “there never has yet existed a wealthy and

civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.”• (While other figures also believed in the supremacy of

whites, it did not play as central a role in their vision of power & government)

Page 21: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• White racial solidarity served to conceal the real class divisions between plantation-owning, slaveholding whites and small, non-slaveholding white farmers/citizens.

Page 22: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Benefits of slavery to slaves:• “Never before has the black race of Central

Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.”

Page 23: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Benefit of slavery to slaves:• “in few countries so much is left to the share

of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age.”– Better than being an industrial laborer, a more

gentle, paternal form of power

Page 24: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

John C. Calhoun

• Thus, slavery stabilizes society:• “There is and always has been in an advanced

stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North. . . .”

Page 25: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

A note on terminology

• Black vs. African-American (power and words)– While the preferred term is today African-

American, the point is that black people at the time we are discussing were deliberately excluded from the American political community.

– When discussing the historical injustice of racial relations in the US, it seems inappropriate to pretend that people of African descent were not excluded from the political community

Page 26: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

A note on the class authors

• Great majority white men• Non-whites, women largely excluded from

participating in public political debate

Page 27: What is America? Poli 110J 2.3 We shall be as a city upon a hill.

Coming Up

• Monday: MLK Holiday• Wednesday: O’Sullivan• Friday: Lincoln-Douglas debates