American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era | BRI Scholar Talks | Constitution Day 2023

0:01 [Music] for this special episode of scholar talks on Constitution Day Life The Guiding question is why is it important for Americans to have conversations about contested ideals our very special guest today Andrew Lang is a professor of history at Mississippi

0:22 State University his first book in the wake of War military occupation emancipation and Civil War America won the Tom Watson Brown book award his second a contest of civilizations exposing the crisis of American exceptionalism in the Civil War era was

0:42 a finalist for the prestigious Lincoln prize I am Tony Williams Senior fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute and I want to welcome you to this very special episode of scholar talks on Constitution Day live Andy I want to thank you very much for joining us thank you for having me Tony it’s a pleasure to be here you know Constitution Day live is a great time to

1:05 reflect on the themes that you’ve written about on American ideals about American exceptionalism uh those common ideals we have As Americans but it’s also an important time maybe to reflect on those times where we’ve disagreed about them as well indeed um the you know the the whole idea of American identity American

1:25 exceptionalism uh one can argue and I certainly do argue uh our our Notions that are even older than the United States itself dating uh uh in the in the Deep Colonial past and transcending all the way to the present now you discussed the contested idea of American exceptionalism in the Civil War era yeah

1:47 can you maybe briefly describe for us what you mean by American exceptionalism I know for me and when I teach my own classes I like to have others Define it for me because those who came before us have defined it much better than I uh can attempt to do so I’ll go to that great American commentator who is not even American himself but the Frenchman

2:08 Alexis to tocqueville uh during his uh grand tour in the United States in the 1830s he said most famously the situation of the Americans is therefore entirely exceptional and it is to be believed that no other Democratic people will be placed in it now what did he mean well he certainly did not mean that the United States was Superior better on an

2:32 upward trajectory to to some destined future if anything what he meant is that what was happening in the United States and with this rise of American democracy he was looking at Americans as kind of a weird group of people um and quite literally an exceptional people a different people what did he

2:52 mean by that uh people that were removed from an Unbound from a feudal past absolved from a noble ruling tradition uncorrupted by by an established state church and what he found is instead a society that believed itself to be egalitarian

3:14 equalitarian is what he might say people who defined their Democratic Republic based on what it was not a monarchy an aristocracy an arbitrary uh ruling class and if anything what he noticed is that Americans believed themselves to be the

3:34 first Society in world history ever to predicate their Nation on the ideal that the individual is Sovereign and that the individual owes uh him and herself to natural rights that government is bound to protect so as a follow-up how did these rival conceptions of these ideals develop in the course of the mid-19th

3:56 century between the different sections of the country yeah I mean this in in my in my reading of the American past it’s the fundamental and ultimately irreconcilable definitions and conceptions of American exceptionalism that contribute to the um uh coming of the American Civil War and at the heart of this at the heart of

4:18 this um debate on what makes America unique in the 19th century we we have to locate the central place of slavery uh within an otherwise Republic of Liberty it is by far the most consequential debate on the role of slavery in a constitutional republic but a constitutional republic

4:38 predicated um in the Declaration of Independence on the ideals of natural human equality what we see um in the at the very outset of the American political experience at the at the Constitutional Convention itself you know the the convention um uh meets in 1787

5:01 with something already have having happened over the previous decade um in the in the newly found United States and that is this presumption as Sean Williams has described so well in his own work this idea that governments do not or are not obligated to uphold property

5:21 in man this is itself a unique moment in human political uh Traditions uh up to that point in in human societies it was just assumed that slavery and human bondage was a natural normal part of life until the revolutionary era when governments

5:41 in the northern colonies northern states begin to question this presumption and so as as valence describes and I I I completely by his argument he says that perhaps it’s not slavery that caused the American Civil War but rather Perhaps it is anti-slavery that caused the Civil War because we would

6:02 never have the rise of a pro-slavery American exceptionalism a pro-slavery ideology without its predecessor in anti-slavery and how did the these differing northern and southern understandings of American ideal shape their reactions to the tumultuous events

6:23 of the 1840s and 1850s it’s a great question by the 1840s and 50s slaveholders in the United States had accrued a a powerful and disproportionate share of political Authority in the federal government and anti-slavery Advocates both white

6:43 and black and ultimately the Republican Party by 1854 uh in in the with the with the Inception of the Republican Party believed that slaveholders should they proliferate human bondage Across the Nation across the federal territories across the continent they would ultimately eradicate opportunity from common

7:05 individual citizens from uh claiming private property engaging in Social Mobility economic independence and personal sovereignty ultimately Republicans alleged slaveholders and their allies in the Democratic party for perpetuating a slave power conspiracy to overturn the

7:27 entire Democratic constitutional edifice of the American political order conversely slaveholders alleged that anti-slavery advocates in their abolitionist rhetoric and their anti-slavery rhetoric ultimately would Inspire the enslaved in the South to engage in massive bloody rebellions and

7:49 insurrections on the par of Jamaica and Haiti Barbados and overturn one of the last remaining powerful slave holding nations in the world and so where does the compromise come in uh within a within this kind of condition that’s the question so as a follow-up observation perhaps uh you know this debate over

8:12 these rival views uh was rarely civil uh there was there were to be threats uh even sort of widespread violence even in the halls of Congress maybe with the exception of the Compromise of 1850 but you know all of this contention that you’re talking about leads to Civil War this this is this is one of the great

8:34 ironies really because um in the American exceptionalist tradition in the 19th century on the one hand Americans of all Stripes believed their Nation to be unique separate destined even on a on a separate historical track from the rest of the world which is what um Civil War

8:54 um civil conflict monarchical consolidation centralizing power and yet in in many respects the United States is following along the same 19th century trajectory of civil conflict and civil disturbance that most other societies in the 19th century World um experienced

9:15 and so Americans really did have to deal with this there was always a complimentary abiding fear in the United States about disunion about the about the prospect of Civil War what it would render because in the Advent of national collapse and Civil War the entire process of self-government would never

9:37 be restored um the the great fear among all parties is if this experiment in the United States fails then every other opponent across the world of democracy constitutional republicanism could point to the failure of the United States failure of the United States and say see it doesn’t work these upstart Americans

9:59 uh tried something and it failed because of course it was uh destined to fail some people are born to rule and others are born to be ruled and so this is in the back of the minds of most Americans percolating as as the nation tries to negotiate the crisis over slavery and so what are the Rival views of of Abraham

10:20 Lincoln and the Confederates uh regarding secession yeah uh this is this is where it all uh points to um with Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860 and and by that let’s understand what that means it’s not just the election of Abraham Lincoln it’s the election of the first major

10:42 anti-slavery party in American history to claim the White House and a majority in Congress and at that point uh they’re they’re pledged explicitly pledged to placing slavery on the ultimate road to Extinction now now that could mean a century-long plan of of gradual compensated very conservative processes

11:04 of emancipation but one thing was sure the Republican party pledged to place slavery um in a confined space where it existed pledged not to let it expand into the territories not to expand into the Caribbean himid in and ultimately choke it off well if that’s what they pledged

11:26 slaveholders in the American South believed them and they said all right well this is the Republican plan then our status as one of the world’s lone remaining slaveholding societies is indelibly threatened and if that’s threatened so is our constitutional equality under the American political

11:47 order and thus what slaveholders turn to uh was the tradition of 1776 political self-determination as they read the Declaration of Independence and pursued what they argued to be a Peaceable secession but equally true in their words they said what we’re going to do

12:08 is we’re going to create the world’s first nation dedicated entirely explicitly to the proposition that all men are not created equal as the vice president of the Confederacy Alexander Stephen said our new nation is built upon its foundation is a is

12:28 established and it’s Cornerstone rests upon the great truth these are Stephen’s words the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition end quote nothing like this had ever happened on this level

12:49 well we have a crisis if the United States is indeed at a quote-unquote exceptional Nation predicated upon Peaceable democracy well then secession is an illegitimate proposition and that’s the basis on which Lincoln contested the secession crisis it’s the idea that if a political discontents

13:11 lose a a free fair and legitimate election but then destroy the Constitutional basis of the entire system then democracy itself loses all legitimacy and this would be only the first secession movement of its kind uh what would happen in the northern states should a northern political minority

13:32 lose an election well what happened in the west if a western political minority lost an election the entire continent would erupt into these uh petty little petty little fiefdoms of conflict that look much like the old world in Europe and the American experiment as they knew it and as we know it today uh would be over and so there there are two explicit

13:55 competing claims to exceptionalist purpose um right at the outset in 1860 and 61. and during the Civil War how did Emancipation and the enlistment in the Union Army of African-American soldiers um affect the understanding of American exceptionalism during the war yeah

14:16 absolutely um I think it’s important for us to recognize that emancipation is entirely a contingent outgrowth of of how the Civil War evolved and ultimately concluded um emancipation is not a foreordained end to the Civil War just as United States Victory is not a foreordained end

14:38 but as the war expands as it becomes increasingly violent as it becomes clear in the United States that the Confederacy is waging um a a very committed resistance to the United States and if the Confederacy is predicating its

14:59 existence on slavery then it is only just legally morally just to turn that institution against the rebellious States but it also works in so far as emancipation cures ultimately cures the great cancer

15:22 that has roiled the American political experiment for 80 plus years by removing the source of disunion by removing the central source of sectional Discord by establishing not not at first but ultimately establishing some type of consensus

15:42 that slavery has no present and future in the United States only then can the United States hopefully in the minds of emancipation’s practitioners hopefully can the United States Stave off future secession movements now the enlistment of African-American soldiers is a central feature in this

16:05 ever since the beginning of the war African-American men petitioned the Lincoln government to enlist on behalf of the United States now now think about this this is this is this is powerful we we have in the 19th century a few better exponents of the American project then African Americans the very people

16:27 who live at best as second-class Citizens in the United States and at worst as enslaved subjects in the United States and here they are in 1861 recognizing that their service in in Union armies fulfills gives purpose gives definition gives meaning to the very claim that the

16:47 United States has always advertised itself in Lincoln’s words as the last best hope these men are not turning on the Republic they view themselves as equal participants in in the Republic that they at once want to preserve and ultimately perfect and how does Lincoln’s expression of American democratic ideals

17:08 in the Gettysburg Address how is what does that tell us about American exceptionalism during the war there is no better um explication of American exceptionalism prior to 1863 or since 1863 then the Gettysburg address though I suppose the Declaration of Independence would be a a

17:29 close Contender um without the Declaration of course Lincoln Lincoln could never write the Gettysburg address and that’s kind of his point um you know in in 272 words in two and a half minutes Lincoln expressed the the entire concept of American nationhood better than anybody Lincoln is in the Gettysburg Address explaining what he

17:50 always explained and that is that the generations are bound to one another in American history and American Life as he said several months prior to Congress in December of 1862 we cannot Escape history and that was his message um at Gettysburg that the nation that was conceived in

18:11 liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal is now being tested the nation from history is being tested in real time and people uh largely without their own consent have found themselves in the middle of this testing and it is those brave men who here gave their lives

18:32 um on the field at Gettysburg that have demonstrated the extent to which each generation must recommit and rededicate itself to this simple but abiding moral proposition that all people enjoy natural rights that are protected within a constitutional structure and I think that he’s reminding us that democracy is

18:53 precarious it is not inevitable it is delicate but it’s also powerful it encompasses all it excludes nobody at least in its perfected State and as he said um I I think I think this is connected way back to what he said six years previously um in his in his uh retort to the Dred

19:14 Scott decision I feel like you can read Lincoln’s uh response to Dred Scott and Gettysburg in Tandem and he’s saying the same thing in such a powerful way he’s talking about how the American regime evolves and expands and grows over time if we allow its logic to expand and grow and here’s what he said they meaning the

19:35 founders meant simply to declare the right so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit they meant to set up a maxim for free society which should be revered by all familiar to all constantly look to constantly labored for and even though never perfectly attained constantly approximated and thereby

19:58 constantly spreading and deepening its influence augmenting the happiness and value to all people of all colors everywhere it’s that idea that’s being tested on the fields of battle by 1863. and Americans have a choice we can either recognize what is objective what is true what once was in

20:22 Lincoln’s words a consensus or we can reject it Confederates had rejected it explicitly proudly so they were attempting to build an alternative Nation on the exact same soil that had once been conceived and dedicated for a particular purpose so how did the North and South View the

20:43 the the challenges of reconstruction through this lens of American exceptionalism yeah reconstruction uh one of the most complex complicated and misunderstood aspects of All American history just because the United States wins the Civil War and just because emancipation is institutionalized in the 13th Amendment

21:04 in 1865 in no way means that this uh conflict this contest over um American exceptionalism is over if anything it just escalated you know if we look at the Reconstruction South what do we see by the end it’s not explicitly the reconstitution of the old slave holding

21:25 order but it’s something pretty close um southern states have authored Black Codes which restrict curtail limit the freedom the mobility the opportunity of freed people you have the president of the United States Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson blessing um overtly a blessing the

21:45 re-establishment or I should say the maintenance of white political Supremacy in the American South and you have Republicans saying all right well look this war has to mean something right Union and emancipation have to mean something and I’m I’m simplifying a very complex uh set of issues here but ultimately what Republicans say is you

22:07 cannot have freedom I.E emancipation left undefined Freedom has to be tied enduringly to Liberty right the Liberties protected and safeguarded in the Constitution and so the 14th and 15th amendments much like emancipation itself are unintended

22:28 unanticipated contingent outgrowths of the Civil War but their logic is rooted in something from the American past the architects of the 14th Amendment said that what we are doing is is embedding in the Constitution explicitly as explicitly as we can the principles of

22:49 the Declaration of Independence but here’s the problem here’s what ultimately happens how do you enforce something so self-evident when there’s so much white Southern resistance to something like the 14th and 15th amendments what you need is a strong

23:09 centralized active government to enforce these Provisions to enforce these ends and what ultimately transpires during the 1870s is an emergent critique not from the Democrats they’re already critiquing this but a critique among some Republicans opponents to U.S Grant even within his own party

23:30 who are saying if we have a strong centralized militant enforcement wing then have we not transformed into the central states of Europe and ultimately what brings down reconstruction is the Supreme Court White violence in the south and ambivalent Republicans who are all

23:52 saying that the United States has gone too far both in its racial Reformation of the American South and its constitutional Rehabilitation Now American ideals have always been contested and debated yeah Andrea how how can history teach us maybe perhaps to find some common ground

24:12 uh moderation uh through you know deliberation civil conversation building consensus uh you know I know the the lessons of History are fraught but can you know can the failures uh that led to Civil War can they can they maybe teach us to do a little better yeah I mean

24:33 it’s it’s it’s the great question for our time and and I think what I want to do in in first answering that question is to allow us in in the 21st century uh a bit of Grace and humility and and by that I mean let’s let’s recognize that we do live in a politically rancorous time there is real political division

24:56 but let’s also recognize that we are not uh at a at a time where we are more divided than ever before history should teach us that uh we should understand how and why our times today are at once similar but also very different from those times in the past um maybe not better maybe not worse but

25:18 they’re different history requires humility context the ability to see things not in a in an A B binary but let’s look at the gray areas and let’s recognize that at the end of the day um in order for the American constitutional experiment to work you

25:40 you used a really important word that I think has been lost uh both from our political culture and our lexicon and that is consensus I don’t mean consensus on on the real granular details I mean consensus on really basic facts what was the American founding what is the purpose of American political

26:01 institutions what is not the purpose of American political institutions um what are the what are the Privileges but also limits um bestowed upon electoral majorities what are the protections but also the restraints imposed on electoral

26:22 political minorities these questions matter and it seems to me that in many cases in our modern political life these issues have been obscured in order for this entire experiment to work it’s incumbent upon us I mean that’s what Lincoln said at Gettysburg right it is

26:42 it is rather for us the living to engage in the great unfinished work of those who who passed um on on on the fields at Gettysburg I’m in no way suggesting that that war is the answer to our political Solutions or our political problems it’s not but Lincoln was right that it’s up to us

27:04 it is we who live in a political moment who have responsibility to deal with our problems in a civil manner as long as there is a consensus that governs our political debate Andrew Lane that that’s a wonderful new to end on uh I hope we can achieve it uh and I want to thank you very much for joining

27:25 us thank you very much for having me and thank you all for joining us on this special episode of scholar talks please check out our other videos on American ideals on the American founding and on the Civil War in our scholar talks Library thank you