I
A philosophical theory that there are no material things that exist independently of minds (e.g. the minds of God or humans). Consequently idealist interpretations of history see events and social change as resulting especially from the introduction of new ideas and/or the development of old ideas and values. Change in the modern period might be seen as a result of the growth of reason. (Contrasted with materialism.) (David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
Broadly speaking, a world view, or set of ideas which renders the world more comprehensible. There are within the set some assumptions which are taken for granted ('common sense'), and never questioned. Many of the ideas of social Darwinism, for instance, form part of capitalist ideology. More narrowly defined, the term denotes a set of ideas, beliefs and ideals which are at the basis of an economic or political theory or system. If the assumptions are brought to the surface they are generally seen to reflect the material vested interests of those who share the ideology (for instance the assumption that competition is natural often underpins the ideology of those who do well in economic competition). Ideologies are presented as statements of universal truth, but reflect these narrower interests. As such, an ideology supports an already-reached position, which will contain bias and prejudice. (David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
See this link.
Many colonists financed their migration by arriving as indentured servants. Indentured servants were an important source of labor in the colonies; those arriving in the 17th century usually signed contracts (known as indentures) for a fixed term and upon completion received their freedom and a suit of clothes, a similar practice to apprenticeship.
See text about "white slaves."
[There] is [a] difference between assimilation, which is a one-way drive that attaches no value to what is left behind and marked for extinction, and integration, which is a two-way circuit, where the [recent iimmigrant’s] new national consciousness adds a new dimension to the older ethnic tradition, and the older tradition adds emotional depth and rootedness to the new cultural product. SOURCE: Max Lerner, America As A Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957) 93-94.A modification and mutual adjustment of diverse groups or elements into a relatively coordinated and harmonious society or culture with a consistent body of normative standards (most urban communities possess some degree of integration.... ).
Social integration is the process whereby a minority group, particularly an ethnic minority, adapts to the host society and where it is accorded equal rights with the rest of the community. Assimilation is integration such that the immigrants' culture is lost. (Xrefer)
(A synthesis from various sources: Chronicles of American Indian Protest; Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols, David M. Reimers, Native and Strangers, Ethnic Groups and the Building of America, (New York Oxford University Press, 1979) and others.1865-1875
In the twenty years following the Civil War tens of millions of the animals [the bison or buffalo] were killed to feed construction crews building the transcontinental railroads, and to provide leather hides for the rest of the nation. From 1872 to 1874 the hide hunters alone killed more than 3,500,000 of the shaggy beasts while during those same years the Indians killed a mere 150,000 for their food. […] General Philip Sheridan [said] “Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated,[…] as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance.” […] The federal government’s policy toward the Indians of “destroying their hunting habitats, coercing them on reservations, and compelling them to begin to adopt the habits of civilization,” would have a better chance for success, officials believed, if the warriors could no longer hunt.1870s the Black Hills of South Dakota stolen from the Sioux Indian Nation
And in 1980 the Supreme Court ordered the government to pay $117 million plus interest to the Sioux Indian Nation for the Black Hills of South Dakota, stolen from them when gold was discovered there in the 1870s.1871 the United States stopped treating Indian tribes as sovereign nations
As the colonial powers in North America had done, the United States treated Indian tribes as sovereign nations until Congress ended the practice in 1871. In its relations with tribal leaders, the government followed the ritual of international protocol. Indian chiefs who visited Washington were received with the appropriate pomp and ceremony. Agreements between a tribe and the United States were signed, sealed and ratified as was any international pact. ... In practice however Indian sovereignty was a fiction. […] Essentially, treaty-making was a process used to acquire Indian land.1875 Indian Homestead Act
The so-called Indian Homestead Act. This legislation extended to some Indians the provisions of the 1862 Homestead Act if they asked for the land. The optional provisions of this law failed to satisfy the proponents of allotment, however, and after an extended campaign they succeeded in getting Congress to pass the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887.Dawes Severalty Act (1877)
Approximately 138 million acres owned by Indians in 1877 (a little more than 50 million acres in 1966.) The 1887 Dawes Severalty Act /the General Allotment Act / the Dawes Act gave the President authority to divide reservation lands into small plots and allocate them to the Indian men. It was the logical culmination of the nineteenth-century effort to dismember the tribes and deal with individual Indians.
The General Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, was passed to destroy the reservation system and to end tribal relations based on the shared use of land. The Dawes Act provided that Indians on the reservations would be allotted land individually: 160 acres per head of family, 80 acres per single adult, and 40 acres per minor.
Reservation lands left over after the allotment would be sold to whites. According to the "assimilation" rationale, The Dawes Act would be good for the Indian because it would encourage him "to take his land in severalty and in the sweat of his brow and by the toil of his hands to carve out, as his white brother had done, a home for himself and his family." It rarely worked that way. First of all, the land was not allotted to Indians directly but was given in trust to the Bureau of Indian Affairs—the government agency with almost total power over all things Indian.1890 Frontier closed / Wounded Knee Massacre
1890 The Census Bureau officially declared the Frontier was closed. Wounded Knee Massacre: last Indian Rebellion; Chief Big Foot and 300 people of his tribe were massacred.Study a more elaborate time line
A Timeline of American Indian Relations with the Federal
Government, 1787 to 1956
the notion, usually attributed to Adam Smith, that if each individual in society seeks to maximise their own economic gain, this will be to the maximum benefit of society as a whole. It will be as if the activities of individuals in aggregate were guided by an invisible hand towards this wider social benefit, which is unintended by the individuals.(David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
agrarianism
Land Ordinance 1785
On Thomas Jefferson and the West
Jefferson's Indian policy
Jefferson's agrarian ideal
See this link
Right from colonial times, and in the wake of the myth of El Dorado, America was thought of as the new garden of Eden, and a land of abundance, of affluence, a land of plenty, a cornucopia. This myth has persisted to this day.
The Land Ordinance of 1785 was drafted by Thomas Jefferson. It set out the guidelines for the settlement of the the Northwest Territory. The land was to be first marked out in great grids, with prime meridians running north south and base lines running east west no matter where the rivers ran or the mountains intervened. The land thus marked out would be divided into ranges of townships. Each township was six miles square. Each township contained 36 smaller squares called sections. These were to be sold at public auction. Section 16 was set aside for schools: it was central. Sections 8, 11, 26, 29 were reserved for future government purposes. This plan was based upon a New England model. It was favored by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who preferred it over scattered, dispersed development, which could favor lawlessness. Control and order were their principles. These measures framed the settlement of the West.
See http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/ihb/resources/docldord.html
Lewis and Clark were commissioned by Jefferson to explore the west of the continent as far as Oregon and the Pacific (1803-1806) following the Louisiana Purchase.
Lewis and Clark expedition On 18 January 1803. Thomas JEFFERSON asked Congress to appropriate $2,500 for exploring westward from LOUISIANA - then a French colonyto the Pacific. (The final cost was about $40.000.) Jefferson named Captain Meriwether LEWIS and Second Lieutenant William CLARK to command a "Corps of Discovery;. which included 27 enlisted men, Lewis.s slave. three interpreters. and six soldiers who would return after the first winter with scientific specimens. On 14 May 1804. the party headed west for 1.600 miles from the Missouri's mouth in a 55-foot keelboat and two dugouts. After wintering near Bismarck, N.Dak., until 7 April 1805, the corps traveled by boat until 17 August, crossed the Rockies with horses, and reached the Pacific by the Columbia River on 18 November. The expedition started back on 23 March 1806 and reached St Louis on 23 September. The party covered 8,000 miles, experienced one death, and had one fight with Indians, who lost 2 killed. Lewis and Clark were the first whites to cross North America within the US; they greatly increased knowledge of the west, and gave the US a claim to the OREGON country. (Purvis 225)
The expedition was greatly helped by Sacagawea, the Hidatsa (Indian) wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader who was hired by Lewis and Clark as a guide."Sacagawea turned out to be incredibly valuable to the Corps as it traveled westward, through the territories of many new tribes. Some of these Indians, prepared to defend their lands, had never seen white men before. As Clark noted on October 19, 1805, the Indians were inclined to believe that the whites were friendly when they saw Sacagawea. A war party never traveled with a woman -- especially a woman with a baby. During council meetings between Indian chiefs and the Corps where Shoshone was spoke, Sacagawea was used and valued as an interpreter."
See http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/saca.html
Read more about Lewis and Clark
The complete journals of Lewis and Clark (1905 Thwaites edition) are now available for free at American Journeys, along with images drawn by the explorers and engravings made by German artist Karl Bodmer, who followed their route in the 1830's. http://www.nationalhistoryday.org
Links
http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JOURNALS/toc.html
U.S. political party formed by a splinter group of abolitionists. It was created by A. Tappan and T. Weld in opposition to W. L. Garrison, who scorned political action as a futile way to end slavery. At its first party convention in 1840, J. Birney was nominated for U.S. president. By 1844 the party had influenced undecided legislators in many local elections to adopt antislavery stands. In 1848 it dissolved when many of its members joined the Barnburners (see Hunkers and Barnburners) to form the Free Soil Party. http://education.yahoo.com/search/be?lb=t&p=url%3Al/liberty_party accessed Sat. 19 Oct. 2002
Locke (1632-1704)A radical form of liberalism holding that the role of the state should be reduced to an absolute minimum and looks to private property and market exchange as the basis of the good society. According to libertarians, the role of the state should be confined to police protection, the enforcement of contracts, and national defence. Some would go further still, and claim that personal protection could be provided by private associations on a market basis; here libertarianism becomes a form of anarchism. Oxford Paperback Encyclopedia, © Oxford University Press 19. (source: XRefer)
English philosopher who was an initiator of the Enlightenment in England and France, an inspirer of the U.S. Constitution, and the author of, among other works, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, his account of human knowledge, including the "new science" of his day, i.e., modern science.The philosophical basis of the American Revolution are to be found in the works of English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). John Locke wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Treatises on Public government (1690 too). He advocated limited sovereignty and held that revolution was not only a right but an obligation if liberty were threatened. These are the very ideas expressed in the Declaration of IndependEnce (1776).See:http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Locke/second/second-5.html… it was John Locke who, in the early eighteenth century, claimed that a man defines himself primarily by laboring to acquire and develop a piece of property, taking it out of a state of wildness [sic] and into one of cultivation. Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York: OUP, 1992) 233.
oran excerpt from Locke on property
Also
Louisiana Purchase and continentalismThe Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the country and provided land for an agrarian society that Jeffersonians considered to be the empire of liberty. In 1802, the French theoretically had jurisdiction over the territory from the Mississippi valley to the Rockies and possibly farther west to the Pacific. At the time, Napoleon had suffered a severe defeat in his American plans in Dominica. Moreover, acquiring the harbor of New Orleans was vital for the new American republic to make it possible to its Ohio and Mississippi valley farmers to export their crops to the East coast and Europe. So when American negotiators were sent to Paris to buy New Orleans and they were offered the whole territory of Louisiana, Jefferson suppressed his constitutional qualms and secretly urged his envoys to buy Louisiana. “Henceforth, adds Stephanson, purchase would indeed become the preferred and morally correct American way of expansion" (Stephanson 23). For example, Spain sold the Floridas to the United States in 1819 for 5 million dollars (Morson 180). After Jackson’s military incursions into her territory, Spain, who had been more reluctant to renounce its sovereignty over the Floridas, realized she could not contain American pressure.
Although the Constitution did not specifically empower the federal government to acquire new territory by treaty, Jefferson concluded that the practical benefits to the nation far outweighed the possible violation of the Constitution. The Senate concurred with this decision and voted ratification on Oct. 20, 1803. The Spanish, who had never given up physical possession of Louisiana to the French, did so in a ceremony at New Orleans on Nov. 30, 1803. In a second ceremony, on Dec. 20, 1803, the French turned Louisiana over to the United States. http://www.wealth4freedom.com/wisdom/LApurchase.htm. accessed 12 July 2005.
Link
The phrase “Manifest Destiny” was coined by John L. O’Sullivan, archexpansionist editor of the Democratic Review, a very influential periodical of that era. He wrote: it is “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions” (1845).
(emphasis added)
Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissenssions, up to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. […]
[…] Mr. Clay was right when he declared that Annexation was a question with which slavery had nothing to do. The country which was subject to Annexation in this case, from its geographical position and relations, happens to be—or rather the portion of it now actually settled, happens to be—a slave country. But a similar process might have taken place in proximity to a different section of our Union: and indeed there is a great deal of Annexation yet to take place, within the life of the present generation, along the whole line of our northern border. Texas has been absorbed into the Union in the inevitable fulfilment of the general law which is rolling our population westward; the connexion of which with that ratio of growth in population which is destined within a hundred years to swell our numbers to be to the enormous population of two hundred and fifty millions (if not more ), is too evident to leave us in doubt of the manifest design of Providence in regard to the occupation of this continent.
John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, XVII (July and August, 1845), 7-10.
The emergence of Manifest Destiny followed the "victory" of the United States over Britain at the end of the 2nd War of Independence (1812-14). It created a feeling of American superiority and nationalism.Manifest Destiny, in American history, is the supposed belief that America was the land of the chosen people of God, and consequently promised to a great destiny. This assumption justified the conquest of the frontier or the annexation of Indian and Spanish territories. America came to be regarded by Americans as the model nation, important enough to extol its image of a redeeming country, under God and His providence.
The phrase "manifest destiny" was coined by J. O'Sullivan in 1845, the year when Polk was elected president on an expansionist platform. The next year, the Oregon treaty was signed. Manifest Destiny was already a very popular doctrine.
(WASP) civilization and progress were thus to advance into the wilderness. WASP institutions (democracy, individual liberties, public education) were thought to be superior and therefore should be spread across the continent. Protestantism was also thought to be a superior form of religion, better than Spanish Jesuits’ Catholicism.
An associated notion was that of the "natural law tradition": Those who wasted the land (Spanish missions, Indians) must yield.
American expansionists in the first half of the 19th century argued that the United States had a "Manifest Destiny" to stretch its influence until the Pacific coast. Central to the concept of Manifest Destiny was the belief in American superiority: democracy, political liberty, the Protestant religion. Expansionists wanted to protect the virgin lands of the West from the Spanish Jesuits.
(Source of the following: Caroll and Noble 167)
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761555881¶=28#p28
Saturday 5 October 2002
The Mexican War had ushered in the era of manifest destiny, a belief that territorial expansion of the United States was inevitable. Pierce shared in this American expansionist fever. He was eager to annex Hawaii and to acquire Alaska. However, he meant first to purchase Cuba from Spain and to acquire additional territory from Mexico. Cuba had long been regarded by the Southern states as a natural addition to their territory, and Mexican land was needed to make possible a planned transcontinental southern railway. Both projects would aid the slave states and were thus bound to bring about a resumption of the slavery controversy.
http://humwww.ucsc.edu/gruesz/manifest.htm
To free from slavery; a synonym for emancipation (setting a slave free)
A philosophy which holds that everything which exists is material, occupying some space at some time. Thus it denies substantial existence to minds as abstract entities (rather than as an aspect of the material organism of the brain). In explaining history and social change, materialist analyses (for instance marxism) regard development as a function principally of material factors - such as the way we organise our productive activity to gain material subsistence (economic mode of production) . Materialism holds that the predominant ideas and values in society do not derive from abstract thinking and reasoning, but that they are related to material events and ways of organising society. Hence any change to an ecological society which requires radically different values must be accompanied by radical social-economic-political change. (Contrasted with idealism.) (David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism An Introduction (London Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
The idea that American society was able to do what a melting pot can do for different metals, i.e. to create one new metal, here one new people, the American people out the different peoples that immigrants to America belonged to. Ethnic features were erased, immigrants were americanized. It was a “perfect” example of assimilation. (FD) (See salad bowl)
(What follows applies to British colonies before the American Revolution.)
The mercantile theory of trade prevailed in England by the mid seventeenth century. Among other principles, it stated that a nation must sell abroad (export) goods of greater value than she buys from abroad. Doing so, this nation will have a favorable balance of trade as it will get more money from foreign customers than it will pay her own foreign customers. The goods sold abroad can be either visible goods—like a cargo of tobacco from Virginia sold by London merchants to France—or invisible; for example, if an English ship carried wine from France to the Netherlands, the transportation would be paid by a French merchant to an English ship owner. But transportation is no visible goods. The other side of the mercantile theory was that instead of buying goods from other countries, and lose money, it was much better to obtain those goods from one's own colonies: it made one's colonies prosper, it kept the trade from other nations, and it supplied England with goods it couldn't produce itself. On the other hand, any goods commonly produced in England must not be produced in the colonies. Colonies were sources of raw materials: forest products (timber and especially lumber), iron, fish, tobacco, furs, indigo, etc. England sold her colonies handicraft and factory goods—shoes, machines, for example. The regulations controlling trade under the mercantilist system are known as the Acts of Trade. Many historians have argued that it was ruinous for the colonies. This is debatable. As long as the supply of raw materials lasted, the American colonists could make benefits.More information about mercantislim
Belief in a future period of ideal happiness on earth, especially relating to the prophesy of Christ's thousand year reign in person on earth. (David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
Any identifiable cultural, racial, ethnic or religious group that is subjected to disadvantageous patterns of discrimination and prejudice. As such, the term is not used in its literal meaning; a minority group need not be in the numerical minority and being a minority does not necessarily mean classification as a minority group. Thus women, though they are neither a minority nor, strictly speaking, a group, are often referred to as a minority group because of discrimination against them by a male dominated society. At the other extreme are members of certain wealthy, privileged classes who often do form groups and are numerically in the minority but are not classified as such because of the lack of disadvantageous prejudice. These considerations have led some to recommend the term oppressed group as a replacement but it hasn't really caught on. (The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, © Arthur S. Reber 1995 (Xrefer.com)
'An international tendency', arising in the arts and architecture of the West in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries (B and S). The term has been extended to mean, in opposition to postmodernism the approaches to knowledge, the scientific, technological and industrial developments and the hopes and aspirations of the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Underlying all these was the 'Enlightenment project' - the central beliefs of the Enlightenment, which held that it was possible to discern general underlying principles governing nature and society, it was possible to use and manipulate these principles, and that by so doing we could improve the material lot of all humankind. Modernism also holds that there are absolute values which should underpin all modern societies. What these are may be debated (e.g. social justice, sanctity of human life, respect for the individual), but there is a danger that anyone believing they have discovered the 'right' values and principles may use authoritarian means to ensure they are applied universally. The modern period has been characterised by constant change, innovation and crises, and whether it has resulted in the universal progress which had been thought possible is doubted by 'postmodernists'. (David Pepper, Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
On the longest view, modernism in philosophy starts out with Descartes's quest for a knowledge self-evident to reason and secured from all the demons of sceptical doubt. It is also invoked - with a firmer sense of historical perspective - to signify those currents of thought that emerged from Kant's critical 'revolution' in the spheres of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetic judgement. Thus 'modernity' [moderniTY (!)] and 'enlightenment' tend to be used interchangeably, whether by thinkers (like Habermas) who seek to sustain that project, or by those - the post-modernist company - who consider it a closed chapter in the history of ideas. (Source: Xrefer)
De façon très générale, la modernité se caractérise par sa croyance au progrès associé à l'explosion du savoir scientifique et aux promesses de la technologie. Elle est le creuset du développement de grandes théories unificatrices et de la recherche de grands principes organisateurs (les -ismes, dont le communisme, le libéralisme, le capitalisme, etc.), porteurs de "valeurs sûres". L'épistémologie moderne est positiviste; elle s'appuie sur une quête d'objectivité et sur la rationalité instrumentale pour légitimer le savoir et l'organiser en disciplines. L'éthique moderne est anthropocentriste et la liberté de l'individu et de l'entreprise n'a de limite que le respect de la liberté de l'autre. La démocratie est considérée comme l'instrument d'une telle liberté.
Source: http://www.unites.uqam.ca/ERE-UQAM/membres/articles/ERE4.pdf.
Accessed 3 july 2003
1823 The Monroe doctrine: "The American continents ... are ... not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers...."-non colonization of the Western Hemisphere by European nations
- nonintervention by Europe in the affairs of independent New World nations
-noninterference by the U.S in European affairs.
Also cultural pluralism. Sociological terms for the co-occurrence of many cultures (including hybrid forms) in one area, as in the cities of Auckland, Bombay, London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, and Toronto.A sociopolitical policy of encouraging the coexistence and growth of several cultures in one place: 'A policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework commends itself to the government as the most suitable means of assuring the cultural freedom of Canadians' (Daily Colonist, Victoria, British Columbia, 9 Oct. 1971). The term multicultural is sometimes used as a synonym of multiracial: 'Although Britain has a multi-cultural society, where are the black faces among the television announcers, newscasters and sports commentators?' (Daily Telegraph, 20 July 1973).
In recent years, the terms multicultural, multiculturalism, multiculturalist, etc., have been used, both positively and negatively, to identify and discuss a movement that confronts certain perceived biases in Western and especially US society, particularly in education and on college campuses: 'New York's state government voted last week to introduce multicultural history into its schools. The new syllabus, designed to reflect the multiracial make-up of the state, will emphasise the role of women and ethnic minorities, and play down the importance of those who have now been labelledDwems (dead white European males), like Columbus, Jefferson, and Custer. The New York decision was the biggest victory yet for the "multiculturalists", an increasingly powerful group who believe the Anglo-Saxon tradition is a racist, sexist plot designed to preserve white male dominance' (John Cassidy, 'History turns its back on America's heroes', Sunday Times, 28 July 1991); 'It is in its most intense and extreme form ... that multiculturalism is on its way to being a major educational, social and eventually political problem. This version is propagated on our college campuses by a coalition of nationalist-racist blacks, radical feminists, "gays" and lesbians, and a handful of aspiring demagogues who claim to represent various ethnic minorities' (Irving Kristol, 'The Tragedy of Multiculturalism', Wall Street Journal, 31 July 1991).See Australian English, Biculturalism, Culture, Multilingualism, Politically Correct, Racism, Sexism. [Americas, Language, Style]. T.McA The Oxford Companion to the English Language, © Tom McArthur 1992
The first bonafide revisionist, in a sense the prophet of a new western history, was Henry Nash Smith, for it was he who first told us what was wrong with the old history [the history of the West as seen by Turnerians] and dared to call it myth. That was in 1950 with the publication of Virgin Land. By myth Smith referred to the grand archetypal stories of heroic origins and events that all people create for themselves, a kind of folk history written by anonymous minds. Myths tell how things came to be, how they are and why they are, and if the real world does not quite correspond to them, it may come closer to the ideal as time goes on; myths can mightily affect the course of events. In later years Smith admitted he had been a little too quick to dismiss myth as simple falsehood when in truth popular belief and historical reality are joined together in a continuous dialogue, moving back and forth in a halting, jerky interplay. Still, it must be added that there is a lot of falsity in any myth, not excepting the one about the West, and such falsity can lead people into difficult, even tragic, situations. (Worster, Donald. Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West. New York: OUP, 1992. p.6)That, after all, is the principal function of myth: not to etablish facts but to create powerful symbols and designs that can explain the inner core of human experience and provide dreams to live by. - SOURCE: Donald Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 20.
The notion that Americans as a nation have been elected by God to accomplish a mission in this world. This notion can be traced back to puritanism. Associated notions: Puritan experiment, Republican experiment, Manifest Destiny.
Nativism is a form of American nationalism often identified with xenophobia, anti-Catholic sentiment and ideas of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy. It was involved in several anti-Catholic riots in the late 18th century. (source:http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism
This term refers to the prejudice or antagonism against groups of foreigners felt by native-born citizens. In the mid-19th century, it primarily expressed itself against Catholic immigrants through the Know-Nothing Party (also called the American Party). After 1880, nativism chiefly targeted Asians and eastern Europeans. It culminated in the National Origins Act (1924, new law about immigration favoring European immigration). Adapted from Purvis, Thomas L. A Dictionary of American History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, p. 277).
Immigration grew sharply in the 1830s-40s and became increasingly Roman Catholic, with the arrival of large waves of Irish and Germans. Simultaneously a Protestant revival flourished in a climate of economic change and insecurity. Evangelists demonized Catholics as "Papists" who followed authoritarian leaders, imported crime and disease, stole native jobs, and practiced moral depravities. A barrage of such agitation led Protestant workingmen to burn the Ursuline Convent near Boston and to riot in several cities--30 were killed and hundreds injured in Philadelphia in 1844. By the mid-1850s the nativist American Party (a.k.a. "Know-Nothings") won six governorships and controlled legislatures in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and California. They enacted numerous laws to harass and penalize immigrants (as well as newly annexed Mexicans), including the first literacy tests for voting, which were designed to disfranchise the Irish in particular. Attacking the "un-American" foreigner served as a diversion for those unwilling to acknowledge America's own irreconcilable difference--slavery versus abolition--which also split the nativists themselves. As sectional conflict sharpened, Know-Nothingism faltered; by 1860, the party had virtually collapsed. (source and more about nativism)
These laws regulated British trade according to the principles of MERCANTILISM by excluding foreign merchants from the British empire's trade, stimulating certain colonial industries by bounties, and forbidding large-scale manufacturing in the colonies that would compete with British producers. The most important statutes were the NAVIGATION ACTS (1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, 1696), WOOLEN ACT, HAT ACT, NAVAL
(Purvis, Thomas L. A Dictionary of American History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.)
New Garden of Edenhttp://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/New-federalismThe New federalism is a policy theme which became popular in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States that refers to the devolution of power from the federal (central) government to the states. It relies on the Ninth Amendment and Tenth Amendment to provide a constitutional underpinning.
New federalism typically involves the Federal government providing block grants to the states to resolve a social issue. The Federal government then monitors outcomes but provides broad discretion to the states for how the programs are implemented.
One of the early myths about America, going back to the early years of European colonization: America was seen as the land of innocence recaptured after the Fall. America was truly the new Garden of Eden. The myth later applied to the West.
1784 - The Northwest Ordinance of 1784 - equal basis to enter the union; prohibition of slavery; land sectionsThe Northwest Ordinance of 1784 was never put into effect, but it established important principles that would be applied later. It was drafted by Thomas Jefferson. It established the principle that any new state formed in the western territories would enter the Union on an equal basis with the original thirteen. Allocation of land was to be directly to individual settlers which soon proved to be impossible. The ordinance guaranteed the same rights and privileges that citizens of the states enjoyed—Articles 5 & 6. It provided a formula for making new States, and prohibited slavery. Jefferson had written both of these articles into the ordinance he had drafted in 1784, but the article on slavery had been rejected by a single vote.
In 1784 , while serving in the Congress, Jefferson drafted the first Northwest Ordinance , a blue print for the creation of new states north of the Ohio River. In this document, Jefferson reasserted his commitment to republican politics by assuring equality to all states in the Union—a liberal statement, even today. He divided this territory into fourteen rectangular districts and gave them, as befitted his admiration of the classics, such names as Metropotamia, Pelisipia, and Cherronesus. Within these states, he advocated the subdivision of lands into rectangular sections and subsections. The Free and the Unfree pp. 136-37.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
The Northwest Ordinance or Ordinance of 1787 concerned the lands west of the Alleghenies and northwest of the Ohio river called the Northwest Territory. It was part of the land won from the British. Largely through the efforts of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the States from Massachusetts to Virginia had agreed to relinquish their claims to this land, leaving the Continental Congress responsible for the newly formed territory. The Ordinance of 1787 was the most important act passed by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation).
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was passed by Congress on July 13th 1787. The Land Ordinance of 1785 was modified again into the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. It ruled that the formation of a new state in the Northwest Territory required a population of 60,000. It stipulated again that the western lands would move toward full, independent statehood within the union. Every new state would enter the Union on an equal footing with the original thirteen. Article 5 read: "whenever any ot the said states shall have 60,000 free inhabitants ...such state shall be admitted by its delegates, into the Congress of the United states, on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever.........." It also prohibited slavery With the exception of Texas and California all the western states were admitted to the Union in accordance with this ordinance. What must be clearly seen here is the emphasis on the absolute equality of the newly formed states with the 13 original colonies: the new states were not colonies or protectorates, but equal states...
With the exception of Texas and California all the western states were admitted to the Union in accordance with this ordinance.
Christopher Columbus rediscovered America by looking for a passage to India in the west. Later, by the times of the settlement of Virginia, Europeans had looked on for the fabled and mythical passage to India, which later became also the Northwest passage to China and its supposedly fabulous markets. The myth of the Northwest passage inspired the advocates of continentalism in the 1840s and later. By reaching the Pacific coast in 1848, Americans could achieve one of their most ancient dreams. The transcontinental route between Europe and China, across the American continent, was one of the favorite themes of the time, and strongly supported by Senator Thomas Hart Benton of St Louis in the 1840s. But to accomplish this, Oregon and California were to join the Union. It led to the completion of the transcontinental railroad (1869).
See http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/
http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=499283&secid=.-&JServSessionIdxrefer=nvi1v3y1nh
Calhoun, John C(aldwell) (1782 - 1850) US statesman; vice president (1824-32), a champion of the southern states and a defender of slavery.
His famous Nullification theory (approx. 1831) claimed the rights of states to nullify congressional laws that they considered unconstitutional. He encouraged the annexation of Texas to provide another slaveholding state and to strengthen the power of the South.
See this link