Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Democracy in America
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Week 9: DIA Vol 1 Part 2 Ch. 10(XVIII):Position the Black Race… - Ch. 10(XVIII):[Chances] the American Union Will Last . . .
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HOW LIKELY IS IT THAT THE AMERICAN UNION WILL LAST? WHAT DANGERS THREATEN IT?Tocqueville identifies the first danger in struggles between national vs. states sovereignty over mixed issues in which the jurisdiction over could be contested, such as civil and political rights. While a legitimate concern as Tocqueville describes, the issue of states’ rights would become a convincing piece of propaganda leading many, especially those without slaves, to war. After much back and forth showing the union is useful to all of the states but not essential to any of them he concludes:
. . .the present Union will survive only as long as all of its member states continue to want to be part of it. . .Tocqueville then states two main reasons why the states will want to remain together in the union. The first is to preserve the strong complementary commercial ties the states as a united front have developed. The second seems to be the prevention of some rogue state from turning into a foreign country in their midst. History allows us to discount some of these reasons with suspicion for at one point he says:
Southerners are therefore bound to want the Union preserved so as not to be left to face the Blacks alone. . .He then says something scary, yet also hopeful depending on the level of optimism looking for human commonalities, or pessimism focusing on all of our differences at the time it is contemplated:
I cannot accept the proposition that men constitute a society simply because they recognize the same leader and obey the same laws. Society exists only when men see many things in the same way and have the same opinions about many subjects and, finally, when the same facts give rise to the same impressions and the same thoughts.If the level of optimism is high, his next statement may be believed:
They do not always agree about the best means of governing or the most suitable forms of government, but they do agree about the general principles that ought to rule human societies. From Maine to Florida, from Missouri to the Atlantic Ocean, everyone believes that all legitimate power originates with the people. Everyone shares the same ideas about liberty and equality. Everyone professes the same opinions about the press, the right of association, juries, and the responsibilities of government agents.Tocqueville says the threat to the union comes neither from a diversity of opinion, nor from a diversity of material or immaterial interests, but from the divergent habits and mores that come as a byproduct of Slavery in the South. Beyond these concerns though, Tocqueville declares the greatest peril to the Union is born of its very prosperity in the continual shift of the forces within it that cause rapid but disproportional grow in size, additional sovereign states, and population making Tocqueville think a breakup is just a matter of time.
He sums up this section by stating that contrary to popular European thinking, the federal government is steadily weakening and how this will play out in the future is unknown.
David wrote: "SITUATION OF THE BLACK RACE IN THE UNITED STATES;30 DANGERS TO WHITES CREATED BY ITS PRESENCETocqueville answers the question, Why it is more difficult for the Moderns to abolish slavery and elimi..."
This section was eye opening. Growing up (in upstate NY), I'd always been fed as a kid the narrative that the reason that slavery was abolished (or non-existent) in Northern states was because somehow the Northern whites had a greater level of "moral superiority" and hence, "knew" that slavery was morally wrong, unlike those awful Southerners.
What is incredibly damning is AT's implication that a good deal of the abolishment of slavery in the Northern states was at least as much about economic self-interest as about ensuring the right thing was done. The fact that Northern whites stood to profit more from freeing slaves than keeping them certainly takes a simple narrative and makes it decidedly more complex.
Kyle wrote: "David wrote: "SITUATION OF THE BLACK RACE IN THE UNITED STATES;30 DANGERS TO WHITES CREATED BY ITS PRESENCETocqueville answers the question, Why it is more difficult for the Moderns to abolish sla..."
Just an outsider’s view: de Tocqueville was right that changing mores and prejudices would be much harder than changing law. The latter took only a civil war for accomplishing. Prejudices have been disappearing longer and with more friction, with resistance from both side. But viewing from today the perspective of a nation not divided by race is not so impossible as in de Tocqueville’s book and interracial conflict is not insolvable, how difficult it could be.
Kyle wrote: "This section was eye opening..."I was surprised by several of Tocqueville's observations here as well. The idea the South depended upon the Union to step in and save them from a giant slave revolt was new one for me. We should remember that Tocqueville was there during Nat Turner's Slave rebellion, therefore fears may have been at a peek around that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Tur...
I am always amazed to learn about the establishment of Liberia for the deportation of blacks back to Africa. I have never heard the math proving the rate of sending people to Liberia had no chance of keeping up with the birth rate.
And apparently slavery as economically disadvantageous in the South as it was in the North. The inertia of a horrible idea never ceases to amaze me.
Wherever Whites have been more powerful to date, they have kept Negroes in degradation or slavery. Wherever Negroes have been stronger, they have destroyed Whites.He states it because Haiti ot there's another place where it occurred? If he states it because Haiti he is very closeminded to atribute the haitian revolution to "Wherever Negroes have been stronger, they have destroyed Whites". If the haitians had lost the revolution the french would reenslave them or even kill some of them.
Rafael wrote: "He states it because Haiti ot there's another place where it occurred. . ."The 1804 Haiti massacre
The 1804 Haiti massacre was carried out against the remaining white population of native French people and French Creoles (or Franco-Haitians) in Haiti by Haitian soldiers under orders from Jean-Jacques Dessalines. . .
. . .Throughout the early-to-mid nineteenth century, these events were well known in the United States, where they were called "the horrors of Santo Domingo". In addition, many refugees had come to the U.S. from Saint-Domingue, settling in New Orleans, Charleston, New York, Baltimore and other coastal cities. These events polarized Southern U.S. public opinion on the question of the abolition of slavery.
I am not who will blaim the Haitians for doing so.
AdT says that the merging of the white and black races in America is impossible, but now is it finally starting to happen, with the rise in interracial marriages. (And I say, the sooner the better.)
I have a doubt about american Constitution, I will be grateful if any american member could answer it. Tocqueville states that if any state wishes to go off from the Union no one would find any reasonable obstacle to it, but why there was the Civil War? If the Confederate States had the constitutional liberty to do it why the Union States made a war against them for doing it?
Rafael wrote: "I have a doubt about american Constitution, I will be grateful if any american member could answer it. Tocqueville states that if any state wishes to go off from the Union no one would find any rea..."The Constitution makes no provision for secession. Writing from the time (the Federalist Papers) makes it clear that it was understood as a permanent and indissoluble union.
Hopefully a historian or political aficionado will clarify this here, but as I understand it, Tocqueville is probably correct in the actual wording of the Constitution, but not in terms of the way it was widely interpreted. At least, I believe that was the position that South Carolina (and the remainder of the Confederacy) took when they seceded. But the Constitution has always been circumscribed by documents like the Federalist Papers, by precedent, by statute, by practice... For example, after George Washington's precedent of two terms, such was the practice until Roosevelt won three terms during WWII. Afterwards, a constitutional amendment formalized the historic practice of two term limit.Here is an article on the evolution of Constitutional "meaning" that I read this week. It relates to "free" speech, the press, and the First Amendment: http://time.com/5580170/first-amendme...
I have encountered similar discussions about the right to bear arms. Also, aspects of the church/state separation that rears its head from time-to-time.
The Constitution does not directly address secession. Since the Constitution, the matter has been debated by interesting legal interpretations to this day and one civil war.This turned into a long post so I have rolled up the rest into a spoiler
(view spoiler)
The Federal government was not a compact among the states, as southern secessionists maintained. It was a separate national government created by the people, separate from and superior to the states. This is shown by (1) Its own words: "We the people . . . do ordain and establish . . ."; and (2) The fact that it was not approved by the existing state governments, but by popular conventions convened for the purpose.
AdT had perhaps been talking to too many disgruntled southerners. However, from what I've read, the prevailing sentiment in the North in 1860 was to "let our erring sisters go," rather than resort to force. It was the South firing on Ft. Sumter that changed opinion. The insult to the flag was too much to bear peacefully.
Roger wrote: "The Federal government was not a compact among the states, as southern secessionists maintained. It was a separate national government created by the people, separate from and superior to the state..."Thx, Roger! A clarification I was hoping for!
Thank you for your explanations, Lily, David and Roger.
Roger wrote: "The Federal government was not a compact among the states, as southern secessionists maintained. It was a separate national government created by the people, separate from and superior to the state..."I didn't get the sense that AdT would consider the federal government "superior" to the states.
I am not too sure of the "superiority" of the Federal government at the time. It seems to have been more of an agreed upon facilitator and arbiter for and between sovereign states. Tocqueville did say the Federal Constitution was superior to the Constitution of the States due to language and organization, having learned from the state constitutions before it, but consistently holds the Federal government is weaker, and will become even weaker with time.But Roger revisits another key point by mentioning the "We the people" phrase beginning the Preamble to the Constitution. The framers of the Federal Constitution seem to have pulled off a very subtle maneuver by governing the people, as opposed to governing the individual states. Tocqueville noted this earlier when he state:
In America, the subjects of the Union are not states but ordinary citizens. When the Union wants to levy a tax, it addresses itself not to the government of Massachusetts but to each of the state’s inhabitants.The implications of this were not lost on everyone:
(p. 177). Library of America. Kindle Edition.
Patrick Henry adamantly opposed adopting the Constitution because he interpreted its language to replace the sovereignty of the individual states, including that of his own Virginia. Questioning the nature of the proposed new federal government, Henry asked:The fate ... of America may depend on this. ... Have they made a proposal of a compact between the states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing—the expression, We, the people, instead of the states, of America. ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessi...
Tocqueville answers the question, Why it is more difficult for the Moderns to abolish slavery and eliminate its traces than it was for the Ancients, with this response:Recall Tocqueville previously said that mores trumped laws and physical concerns in maintaining the democracy in America; is it the same for maintaining slavery in America? What is the difference between the prejudice of race and the prejudice of the white man?
How does Tocqueville reconcile these two statements? Is any imbalance too tempting an invitation to disaster? Is there no greater sense of justice worth appealing to?Tocqueville then describes another non-intuitive paradox, that the prejudice of whites against blacks is stronger in the states where slavery did not exist or was abolished and seems to grow stronger as slavery is destroyed.
Tocqueville next answers the question of why the Americans are abolishing slavery, at least in the North by explaining the many advantages gained and liabilities avoided by the whites for doing so in a comparison he makes between the opposite banks of the Ohio river between the free state of Ohio and the slave state of Kentucky. Among these are the industriousness, better economy, and faster paid workers of the North vs. the more idle, less industrious slave labor that ultimately costs more to maintain in the south.
Tocqueville's argument seems to be that slavery is not only morally wrong but it is also less economical. Despite these facts, American mores, North and South, have pushed the practice of slavery until the population of slaves exceeded the point of no return, condemning the nation to the evil means by which it must end, one way or another.