Democracy International (American organization)

Transcription

We start more or less in 1850. A couple of things to bear in mind, the categories to bear in mind, which we will talk about more in the next few weeks as we get into American history at this moment. Things that have happened in the 30-40 years before that, that will have a major impact on developments of the 1850s, which we’ll look at more carefully. Number one is what we call the Market Revolution. This is the term that you'll hear a lot of - the Market Revolution. The territorial expansion of the United States in this whole period before 1850, the westward expansion, the acquisition of new territory, and the technological revolution which produced first the canal, then the steamboat, the telegraph the railroad. Here's some images: This is the Erie Canal. Erie Canal - very famous. It's a nice painting from 1830s or 40s of the Erie Canal. The canal was the first technological breakthrough which, basically, we're talking about enabling farmers to get goods to market, to overcome the vast distances that exist in the United States, which set in motion changes in agricultural life, as farmers more and more produce things for the market rather than for their own home subsistence and therefore bought in stores goods that they previously had made at home. In other words, a kind of self-sufficient economy moving toward a much more market oriented economy. This is a map of canals and steamboat routes. The top is 1825. The bottom is 1860. What it just shows is the proliferation of canals and rivers with steamboats on them in that 35-year period. What we're talking about here is the expansion of the economic marketplace, and how more and more people are drawn into market relations, wage labor in cities, commercial farming in rural areas; and we will talk about some of the consequences of that. Here's a wonderful painting - “Mill on the Brandywine”. This also appeared the beginning a factory production. But we should not think about giant steel mills like they used to have in Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Most manufacturing is in rural areas. This is your typical factory around 1840, let’s say. It's in the countryside. It's on a river, with water power providing the energy - turning a wheel to provide energy - and of course the point of this painting is the harmony between nature and industry, right? You can barely notice, in a way, the factory. It’s overwhelmed by the forest and the cultivated areas. The painter is saying - you know, there are people, like Thoreau, at this time, who said that economic development is destroying nature, it is destroying our traditional life. This painter is saying no - it's completely harmoniously integrated into a rural setting. One thing that is not evident in this painting is people, right? There are no human beings here, there are no workers, that are visible, in this painting. Although the factory has workers, presumably. This is, you know, this is sort of typical of factory production in this period. Politics in the 1830s and 1840s was dominated by the Market Revolution. The issues that political parties - at this time we’re talking about the Democratic Party and the Whig party - the issues they debated were the issues thrown up by this market revolution - banking, currency, protective tariff or free trade, internal improvements - should the government pay for railroads, canals, et cetera? What should the role of the government be in connection with economic growth? By the way, we're still debating that today, right? Should the government produce infrastructure? Should it build schools? Should it try to create the conditions for economic growth, or should it stand aside and just let the market - the free market - allocate resources? The Democratic Party, which believed in laissez-faire basically - that is the government standing aside - said that whenever the government intervenes in the economy it benefits one group at the expense of another. So it creates monopolies, it creates favoritism. It should stand aside. The Whig Party generally said no, no - you need governmental action to create an infrastructure. Railroads are too expensive for private companies to build. Schools - who's gonna build them? The government must, the public must create the situation so people can take advantage of the Market Revolution. It's not a question of one being right or wrong, but this was what politics revolved around. Although that will change, as we will see. Here's another wonderful painting by the artist George Caleb Bingham, called “Stump Speaking”. Beautiful painting. This is an emblem of the second major development I want us to keep in mind which is simply the rise of political democracy. By the time our class is beginning, a political party system is in place based on what they called universal white male suffrage. Now that is obviously an oxymoron, right? If it's white male, it's not universal. But nonetheless, compared to the rest of the world, it was a remarkable development - that you have these two political parties, which existed throughout the country. They all existed North, South, East, West - The Democrat and The Whig - they competed avidly for votes and you had a mass democracy - of white man, but still a much larger percentage of the population was able to vote than almost any other country in the world. And democracy became sort of the defining characteristic of American culture. When Alexis de Tocqueville came over here in the 1830s to study American prisons, he quickly decided, I'm here studying the wrong thing. What's interesting in America is not prisons but democracy, which he as a French aristocrat rather disliked. But he said, this is the wave of the - if you wanna see the future of Europe, here it is. Political democracy - in all of its wonders and corruption and craziness. He went up to Albany and he wrote that the members of the New York legislature didn't know how to read and write. We have move much further than that, they can read now. (laughter) But it was a fascinating, you know, what is the impact of the political democracy on the culture, on people's attitudes - Tocqueville. But Noah Webster, who did the American Dictionary in this period, to try to differentiate American language - English as spoken in America from English as spoken in Britain - when he defined “citizen” he had a little footnote where he said - in America, having the right to vote makes you a citizen. In another words, not in Europe - because nobody could vote over there. Not in England. It wasn't until the 1880s that the working class in England got the right to vote. It took until 1832 for the middle class to get the right to vote. But in America, the right to vote becomes essential to freedom and citizenship - said Noah Webster. Now, this painting shows you grassroots democracy in action. There's a speaker in his white suit haranguing the crowd. A man is rising to… I don't know, ask him a question? Confront him? Denounce him? He's dressed very humbly. There's all sorts of people sitting around in various modes of dress - different classes of people. Bingham is an artist living in Missouri in the 1840s. But of course if you look at it, who's not in the picture? Who is missing from this picture? Women, right? There’s no women here. Democracy is something for men only. And it's all white. This is a slave state - Missouri - with a significant free black population. But that free black population does not have the right to vote in Missouri or in most other states, and they're not present. As this is democracy, but it shows you the limits of democracy as well as the expansiveness of political democracy at this moment. But the point is that these parties these political parties were a great bond of national unity. They helped hold the nation together. It was a very large sprawling nation, it has expanded enormously, and it had increasingly diverse economies within it. And yet, these two political parties were bonds of unity. They brought together leaders from all different sections of the country to hammer out common principles, common political goals, support candidates for office. In a nation fracturing along sectional lines, the political parties were, as I say, important in holding it together. It is not just a coincidence that the crack up of the nation was caused by a presidential election - 1860 as we'll see. The shattering of the political system is followed by war four months later. That’s not the only cause, by any means, but it's not just a coincidence either.