The history principle tells us that how we have gotten where we are matters. The significance of history is underscored by the fact that every nation works assiduously to glorify its past in order to inspire the loyalty of its citizens in the present. The United States of America is no exception. In our texts and national celebrations we repeat a tale of intrepid explorers and bold settlers braving an uncharted wilderness. We tell the story of the British tyranny and oppression that sparked our revolution. We study the democratic principles annunciated by our founders and founding documents and are proud that these ideas became an inspiration to all the people of the world.
The story we learn in school is true in part but incomplete. It omits many of the reasons that colonists actually came to North America. It ignores the brutal wars that White settlers and their militias fought to drive Native Americans from the land. It overstates the villainy of the British and overlooks the greed of the colonists. And it ignores the fact that their espousal of political freedom somehow did not prevent Americans from profiting from the morally wrong institution of slavery.
The history principle, of course, often works in tandem with the institution principle. Political institutions built during one historical period will often continue to structure politics and power for decades, or even centuries, to come. Thus, we continue to be governed by the political institutions built during America’s founding. At the same time, the institution of slavery, although abolished in 1865, left America with a legacy of racism and discrimination with which we continue to struggle today.
In America’s earliest history we can already identify some of the forces and elements that preceded the American Revolution, played a role in the writing of the Constitution, and continue to affect American life in the twenty-first century. These include capitalism, representative government, and violence and racism.
The first feature, capitalism, was central to the settlement and development of the United States and became part of the nation’s DNA in the form of government institutions built to protect and promote the nation’s market economy (see Chapter 15).
The colonization of North America began with grants of royal charters to private enterprises seeking to colonize tracts of land. Every modern corporation begins the same way—it is incorporated under the law for a particular purpose. Another capitalistic aspect of North American colonization was the manner in which these enterprises amassed sufficient wealth to undertake such a risky venture as the settlement of a colony. No single merchant could afford such an undertaking. Accordingly, groups of merchants in such cities as London organized “joint stock companies” and raised money by selling shares to investors who assumed some of the risk in exchange for the promise of profit if the enterprise succeeded.1
As early as 1620, three joint stock companies were engaged in the business of establishing colonies in North America. The pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on board the Mayflower had entered into a seven-year agreement with one such company to pay for their crossing with a share of the profits they hoped to earn from fishing, trapping, and farming. Other merchants, unfortunately, soon saw the potential for profit in the transportation and sale of enslaved persons to work in the fields of colonial plantations, which we will discuss later in this chapter. Much of the settlement of America was driven by the hope of profit and the organization of private enterprises capable of raising funds for expensive and risky sea voyages. America virtually began as a series of commercial ventures. Property rights, contracts, the rules of exchange, the promotion of markets, and other elements of America’s capitalist economy grew nearly organically from these roots and became institutionalized over time in a host of federal, state, and local agencies and regulations.
A second key feature of America’s colonial history was the early establishment of political freedom as an important value and, as a direct result, representative government as a form of rule. Although political freedom was often denied—as it was in slavery and the theocratic practices of some of the early religious sects—it was nevertheless commonly espoused in colonial America. In the sparsely settled colonies, thousands of miles from royal power, no government could muster the force to rule without the cooperation of the governed. In exchange for their cooperation, colonists often demanded to be consulted—they wanted to be asked rather than told. Thus, in New York in 1680, colonists declared that they would not pay taxes unless they were allowed representation in the colony’s affairs. The far-off Duke of York, who nominally ruled the colony, could not easily compel tax payment, so he acceded to colonists’ demands. Many White, male colonists called themselves “freemen” and believed they were entitled to vote and be represented in decision making. Note the emphasis on men in the term freemen. In colonial America, generally speaking, only White men possessed the right to vote or to hold public office. Few exceptions were made. In New York, for example, a wife might vote if her husband permitted it. Generally, however, political rights were understood to belong to men, and it would be many decades before women won the right to vote or hold office in any of America’s states.
Nevertheless, institutions of representative government were established early in colonial history. The first legislature in America was the Virginia House of Burgesses, established in 1619. Two representatives from each settled district in the Jamestown area were elected by a vote of White men over the age of seventeen to meet with the colonial governor. The Virginia House has continued to be a representative body since that time. During the remainder of the seventeenth century, representative bodies were established in other colonies, including Massachusetts in 1634 and Connecticut in 1639. Political freedom, representation, and the importance of the consent of the governed also became part of the nation’s DNA during the colonial period and, as we shall see later in this chapter, became more fully institutionalized by the U.S. Constitution.
A third feature of America’s past that significantly shaped the nation’s subsequent development was the institution of slavery, which encompassed violence and racism that extend to the present and will be explored throughout this book. The first enslaved persons—all Africans—brought to the colonies arrived in Jamestown in 1619. This was ironically the same year that Virginia’s first representative body was established. Enslaved persons from Africa were transported to the colonies in growing numbers and by the end of the seventeenth century made up a sizable portion of the population of the southern states. Enslaved Africans in North America were legally considered “chattel,” a species of living property whose survival depended completely upon their economic value. As one Virginia judge put it, the condition of chattel slavery defines the enslaved person as “below the rank of human beings, not only politically, but physically and morally.”2
Slavery soon became central to the plantation economy that developed in the South. And because southern agricultural production was so important to the colonial (and then the national) economy, slavery came to be a vital element of the economic development of the United States. Thus, a society that prided itself on freedom was built upon a foundation that included slavery.
Slavery was abolished in 1865, but destitute formerly enslaved persons were soon deprived of their political rights and relegated to a second-class status—no longer chattel but not yet freemen. The subordinate status of African Americans was institutionalized by the “Jim Crow” laws enacted in the late nineteenth century and by continuing restrictions on Black political rights in the twentieth century. This legacy of slavery set the stage for decades of struggle as the descendants of formerly enslaved persons fought for political rights and economic opportunities. This struggle will be the central topic of Chapter 5.
Violence was also central to America’s early history and the legacy of that history is with us today. Slavery was in itself a type of violence and entailed the use of violence to enforce discipline and prevent enslaved persons from breaking free from their lives of bondage. Violence was also a major element in the relationship between White settlers and Native Americans.
When the first colonists arrived in North America, they encountered Native American nations. The subsequent expansion of White settlement in North America is a history of land seizures and the forcible removal of Native Americans from land coveted by Whites. Settler claims began relatively peacefully in the East with land purchases and treaties. However, as settlers moved toward the Appalachians and then into the Ohio Valley and beyond, armed conflicts between Whites and Native Americans became more commonplace. Settlers disregarded treaties or did not bother with them. Whites formed heavily armed militias to enforce their property claims and drive Native Americans farther and farther west and eventually onto reservations. This process began during the colonial period and accelerated after the United States gained its independence and built an army able to protect White settlers and their land claims. In 1830 and 1834, Congress enacted legislation providing for the removal of all Native Americans to what was then the far western wilderness, beyond the present-day state of Missouri. By the late nineteenth century, Native Americans were compelled to surrender the remainder of the land upon which they had lived.
The violence associated with constant clashes between White settlers and Native Americans made its mark on America in the form of widespread ownership of firearms, the tradition of heavily armed local militias, and the glamorization and glorification of frontier violence in the media. The tradition of private ownership of firearms became a constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Like capitalism, representative government, and slavery, two centuries of violence and racism directed against Native Americans also affected America’s DNA.
This early history of America also helped set the stage for the American Revolution. Capitalism shaped the interests that played important roles in the colonies. Among the most important of these interests were the northern merchants who had developed global trading ventures and the southern planters who had based their commercial empires upon the enslavement of Africans and their American-born descendants. Representative institutions gave the colonists strong political bases from which to organize their opposition to the British. The colonial militias and widespread expertise in the use of firearms made the colonists a formidable foe even for the British army.