The Romance of Democracy:
Manifest Destiny
“All this will be our future history”
(Political Science 565)
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• Confronted with criticism, designer Mark
McNairy tweets:
• “MANIFEST DESTINY. SURVIVAL OF THE
FITTEST.”
• “I AM SORRY FOR MY SURVIVAL OF THE
FITTEST COMMENT. IT HURT ME DEEPLY TO BE
CALLED A RACIST AS THAT IS NOT ME. I
REACTED WITHOUT THINKING.”
The Age of Enlightenment
• ~1650~1800
• For:
– Reason
• The source of universal
truth
– Scientific method
• Empiricism
• Nature as the source of
truth
• Nature as a reserve of
resources to be exploited
• Nature as a thing to be
dominated
– Intellectual freedom
• Freedom to exercise
reason
• Liberal, but not always
democratic
• May or may not entail
political freedom
– Contract
• Only consensual
agreements are binding
4
The Age of Enlightenment
• Against
– Passions
• Emotions
• Bigotries
– Favorable or unfavorable
• Appetites
– Tradition
• Authority
• Customs
– Superstition
• Religious
• Magical
• Ritual
5
The Romantic Era
• ~1780~1850
• Against
– Aristocracy
• Political forms
• Social norms & restrictions, manners
– Over-emphasis on rationalism
• Deadening, mistaken
• Science & reason not only sources of truth
6
The Romantic Era
• For
– Sincerity
•
•
•
•
Be who you are
Authenticity
Spontaneity
Emotion
– Love, fear, awe,
solidarity
• The importance of unique
individuals
– Nature
• Inherently valuable
• More important than the
social world
• Beautiful, forceful
– New politics
• Liberal & radical
• Nationalist
– Aesthetics
• Folk art & customs
• The experience of beauty
7
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
8
Jacksonian Democracy
• Jacksonian Democracy
– Egalitarian
– Racist
– Populist
– Nationalist
• Young America
– Locofocos
– Expansionist
9
Walt Whitman’s “The Last of the
Sacred Army” (1842)
• A fictional encounter with the last living veteran of the
Revolution.
– He is the last man alive to have served under George
Washington, and “the Last of His Witnesses.” After handling a
“relic” once handled by Washington and bearing his initials,
Whitman asks a philosopher, who had also come to see the Last
Witness whether it is well that “such reverance [sic] be
bestowed by a great people on a creature like themselves.
• The self-respect each one has for his own nature might run
the risk of effacement, were such things often seen.
Besides, it is not allowed that man pay worship to his
fellow.” (21)
– Idolatry
– Can you worship something you have made?
10
Walt Whitman’s “The Last of the
Sacred Army” (1842)
• The Philosopher:
• “Fear not,” because “the occurrences that you have
just witnessed stem from the fairest and manliest traits
in the soul.” The philosopher is able to persuade
Whitman that
– it is well that the benefactors of a state be so kept alive in
memory and song, when their bodies are mouldering.
Then it will become impossible for a people to become
enslaved, for though the strong arm of their defender
come not as readily to the battle, his spirit is there,
through the power of remembrance, and wields a better
sway even than if it were of fleshly substance. (22)
11
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
– Whitman & Hawthorne
– NOT Melville
12
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
• Unconsummated revolution
13
United States Magazine & Democratic
Review
• “Politico-literary” journal
• Nationalist project of culture
• Helped to launch Nathaniel Hawthorne & Walt
Whitman to prominence
• Central to “Young America”
– Nationalism, democracy, expansion
14
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”
The Nation as Crusade
• 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”
The Nation as Crusade
• 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 Nation as Crusade
• 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 Nation as Crusade
• The American interest = the universal interest
– Voluntary principle = democracy = United States =
“the cause of all mankind”
The Nation as Crusade
• 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)
The Nation as Crusade
• Defining the community:
• What about slavery?
– Union composed of states, not individuals
– Illegitimate to compel change in status quo
– Would violate democratic principle
The Nation as Crusade
• Liberty > Equality
– To be treated as an equal, one must be capable of selfrule.
– 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.
The Nation as Crusade
• 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 Nation as Crusade
• “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
The Nation as Crusade
• “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
The Nation as Crusade
• “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 Nation as Crusade
• 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
The Nation as Crusade
• “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.”
The Nation as Crusade
• 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 Nation as Crusade
• 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
The Nation as Crusade
• 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
The Nation as Crusade
• “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.
The Nation as Crusade
• 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.”
The Nation as Crusade
• 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 Nation as Crusade
• 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
Spot Resolutions
• First. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was
shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the
territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican
revolution.
– Second. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was
wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico.
• Third. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people,
which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas
revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the
United States army.
– Fourth. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all
other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and
west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.
Spot Resolutions
• Fifth. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or
any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws
of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by
accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries,
or having process served upon them, or in any other way.
– Sixth. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the
approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes and
their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the message stated; and
whether the first blood, so shed, was or was not shed within the inclosure of
one of the people who had thus fled from it.
• Seventh. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his message
declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers, sent
into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the
Secretary of War.
– Eighth. Whether the military force of the United States was or was not so sent
into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the
War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the
defense or protection of Texas.