taken place with the people of America” in which “all men are born free and equal” that is “totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves.”
George Washington wrestled with this tension on the battlefield for his country and within his soul. With his victorious Continental army at Yorktown 25 percent black, he struggled to shed some of his slaveholder’s mentality, ultimately freeing his slaves at his death. He warned his countrymen about getting involved in the imperial affairs and wars of Europe, yet he acknowledged that the future of the young democratic republic rested on westward expansion and imperial subjugation of indigenous peoples. In 1787 Benjamin Franklin, in his closing speech at the Constitutional Convention, uttered a dreadful warning that America would likely end up as a despotic republic with docile citizens:
I agree to this constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
From the birth of American democracy, then, the battle was raging over the scope of freedom, the reach of equality, and the tension between democratic and xenophobic elements.
The most painful truth in the making of America—a truth that shatters all pretensions to innocence and undercuts all efforts of denial—is that
the enslavement of Africans and the imperial expansion over indigenous peoples and their lands were undeniable preconditions for the possibility of American democracy.
There could be no such thing as an experiment in American democracy without these racist and imperial foundations. It is no accident that from the nation’s founding (1789) to the Civil War (1861) the vast majority of Supreme Court justices—the highest rule of law in the land—were slaveholders and imperial expansionists. And for forty-nine of these seventy-two years, the presidency of the United States was held by slaveholders and imperial expansionists. And the only ones reelected president were slaveholders and imperial expansionists.
The most powerful and poignant work ever written about America—Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic two-volume
Democracy in America
(1835, 1840)—reached a number of dark conclusions about this lethal mix of race, empire, and democracy. Tocqueville feared that America would produce a new form of despotism in the world—a democratic despotism, a term also used by W. E. B. Du Bois almost one hundred years later. This despotism would be guilty of genocide against indigenous peoples and unable to create a multiracial democracy owing to the deep white supremacist practices of the country’s tyrannical majority. The last and longest chapter of Tocqueville’s first volume—a chapter often skipped over or treated lightly by scholars who fan and fuel America’s denial of its racist and imperial roots—put forward the most difficult and delicate challenge to the American democratic experiment: would race and empire undermine American democracy?
I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same yoke, might perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so difficult a task;
George Washington wrestled with this tension on the battlefield for his country and within his soul. With his victorious Continental army at Yorktown 25 percent black, he struggled to shed some of his slaveholder’s mentality, ultimately freeing his slaves at his death. He warned his countrymen about getting involved in the imperial affairs and wars of Europe, yet he acknowledged that the future of the young democratic republic rested on westward expansion and imperial subjugation of indigenous peoples. In 1787 Benjamin Franklin, in his closing speech at the Constitutional Convention, uttered a dreadful warning that America would likely end up as a despotic republic with docile citizens:
I agree to this constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
From the birth of American democracy, then, the battle was raging over the scope of freedom, the reach of equality, and the tension between democratic and xenophobic elements.
The most painful truth in the making of America—a truth that shatters all pretensions to innocence and undercuts all efforts of denial—is that
the enslavement of Africans and the imperial expansion over indigenous peoples and their lands were undeniable preconditions for the possibility of American democracy.
There could be no such thing as an experiment in American democracy without these racist and imperial foundations. It is no accident that from the nation’s founding (1789) to the Civil War (1861) the vast majority of Supreme Court justices—the highest rule of law in the land—were slaveholders and imperial expansionists. And for forty-nine of these seventy-two years, the presidency of the United States was held by slaveholders and imperial expansionists. And the only ones reelected president were slaveholders and imperial expansionists.
The most powerful and poignant work ever written about America—Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic two-volume
Democracy in America
(1835, 1840)—reached a number of dark conclusions about this lethal mix of race, empire, and democracy. Tocqueville feared that America would produce a new form of despotism in the world—a democratic despotism, a term also used by W. E. B. Du Bois almost one hundred years later. This despotism would be guilty of genocide against indigenous peoples and unable to create a multiracial democracy owing to the deep white supremacist practices of the country’s tyrannical majority. The last and longest chapter of Tocqueville’s first volume—a chapter often skipped over or treated lightly by scholars who fan and fuel America’s denial of its racist and imperial roots—put forward the most difficult and delicate challenge to the American democratic experiment: would race and empire undermine American democracy?
I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same yoke, might perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so difficult a task;
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