Split Origin Story of the USA

[pood]

Actually they did NOT think of themselves as a single nation from the beginning. There were lots of discussions, arguments, compromises over the years leading up to the constitutional convention in 1787.

They thought of themselves as 13 separate sovereign states that were part of a larger union, hence UNITED States of America.

Very akin to the Iroquois Confederacy whose lands they abutted, independent polities with a clearly understood body of similarities and shared political goals, with a council structure at the top that could function as an effective nation in international contexts without having any authority to mess with one another's internal affairs.

Yes, and in fact we have plenty of evidence that the founders took ideas from the Iroquois Confederacy.

 

[TomC]

Its existence was both de jure and de facto by any reasonable metric.

Yabut, if you approached most people living in it on 7/4/1776 and asked them about The United States of America, it would have drawn blank stares.

Honestly, if the Declaration of Independence had been put to a free and fair referendum in June 1776, I don't think it would have won.
But the wealthy WASP male folks were generally supportive, as long as mention of the abolition of slavery was eliminated, so that is what happened.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

Yabut, if you approached most people living in it on 7/4/1776 and asked them about The United States of America, it would have drawn blank stares.

That is not true, unless they were spectacularly uninformed of recent events.

There was no internet then, Poli. And Trump had bombed the airports, so the day of The Signing, most people did not know about it.

 

[pood]

Its existence was both de jure and de facto by any reasonable metric.

Yabut, if you approached most people living in it on 7/4/1776 and asked them about The United States of America, it would have drawn blank stares.

Honestly, if the Declaration of Independence had been put to a free and fair referendum in June 1776, I don't think it would have won.
But the wealthy WASP male folks were generally supportive, as long as mention of the abolition of slavery was eliminated, so that is what happened.
Tom

An articulate denunciation of slavery was written by the slave-holding Thomas Jefferson in his draft Declaration, as follows:

He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

The passage was deleted by the other founders sometime on July 1-3, 1776.

 

[Elixir]

the United States of America, which has always elected its leaders, rather than have them seize power through dint of force

Yeah, The Revolutionary War wasn't forcible at all

Technically, the United States of America did not exist at the time of the Revolutionary War. Technically, it did not exist until the Article of Confederation in 1781.

But, as I noted earlier, the U.S. dates its founding to July 4, 1776, and this is the position that Lincoln took, too, as well as that our true founding document is the Declaration of Independence, prior to both the Articles and the Constitution. In fact as well as legally, the U.S. began to exist when the Declaration was signed.

The Colonies declared themselves independent from England in 1776. They declared themselves to be free and independent states, plural, not a single nation.

One could argue that as soon as a flag with thirteen stripes became the symbol of the Unity of the States, only then were there states officially operating in unison in the popular mind.

 

[TomC]

Yabut, if you approached most people living in it on 7/4/1776 and asked them about The United States of America, it would have drawn blank stares.

That is not true, unless they were spectacularly uninformed of recent events.

There was no internet then, Poli. And Trump had bombed the airports, so the day of The Signing, most people did not know about it.

That's so important.
"Spectacularly uninformed of recent events" was the overwhelming norm. Most people weren't even functionally literate by modern standards.
Tom

 

[Shadowy Man]

the United States of America, which has always elected its leaders, rather than have them seize power through dint of force

Yeah, The Revolutionary War wasn't forcible at all

Technically, the United States of America did not exist at the time of the Revolutionary War. Technically, it did not exist until the Article of Confederation in 1781.

Technically your early presidents disagreed with this, and Lincoln in particular was adamant that the US existed from the moment that the Declaration of Independence was signed. Technically.

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

 

[pood]

the United States of America, which has always elected its leaders, rather than have them seize power through dint of force

Yeah, The Revolutionary War wasn't forcible at all

Technically, the United States of America did not exist at the time of the Revolutionary War. Technically, it did not exist until the Article of Confederation in 1781.

Technically your early presidents disagreed with this, and Lincoln in particular was adamant that the US existed from the moment that the Declaration of Independence was signed. Technically.

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

I think you misunderstood him. He wasn’t saying that Lincoln was an early president, he was saying that Lincoln, a later president, agreed with the early presidents who traced the beginning of the United States to the Declaration and not to the Constitution or to the prior Articles of Confederation.

 

[Politesse]

Yabut, if you approached most people living in it on 7/4/1776 and asked them about The United States of America, it would have drawn blank stares.

That is not true, unless they were spectacularly uninformed of recent events.

There was no internet then, Poli. And Trump had bombed the airports, so the day of The Signing, most people did not know about it.

The internet us how you get your news, but it is not the only way to get news.

 

[TomC]

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

Lincoln was also trying to explain to his base why seceding from the Union was the right thing to do in 1776, but nowadays seceding from the Union is terrible.
Tom

 

[Shadowy Man]

the United States of America, which has always elected its leaders, rather than have them seize power through dint of force

Yeah, The Revolutionary War wasn't forcible at all

Technically, the United States of America did not exist at the time of the Revolutionary War. Technically, it did not exist until the Article of Confederation in 1781.

Technically your early presidents disagreed with this, and Lincoln in particular was adamant that the US existed from the moment that the Declaration of Independence was signed. Technically.

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

I think you misunderstood him. He wasn’t saying that Lincoln was an early president, he was saying that Lincoln, a later president, agreed with the early presidents who traced the beginning of the United States to the Declaration and not to the Constitution or to the prior Articles of Confederation.

Ok. That wasn’t clear from the language, especially with the word “particularly” seemingly specifying a subset of “early Presidents”.

I apologize for the misread of his intention was indeed as you describe.

 

[TomC]

The internet us how you get your news, but it is not the only way to get news.

How do you suppose illiterate Georgians got their news in 1776?
Tom

 

[pood]

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

Lincoln was also trying to explain to his base why seceding from the Union was the right thing to do in 1776, but nowadays seceding from the Union is terrible.
Tom

The colonies, however, did not secede from Great Britain, because they were never part of Great Britain. They were colonies. The situation in 1860 was quite different.

 

[pood]

The internet us how you get your news, but it is not the only way to get news.

How do you suppose illiterate Georgians got their news in 1776?
Tom

They were tons and tons of newspapers back then, newspaper reading (and book reading) was very big. People knew their Shakespeare, they knew their bible. Not everyone by any stretch was illiterate. Those who were, had people to read the news to them.

 

[pood]

Lincoln on the Declaration, Aug. 7, 1858, during his campaign for Illinois Senate against Stephen A. Douglas:

Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me - take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever - but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity - the Declaration of American Independence.

Why can’t presidents speak today with such force and eloquence?

Lincoln on the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party of his era:

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Take that, MAGAts. He even nailed Barbos’s modern Russia, then as now repellant.

 

[TomC]

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

Lincoln was also trying to explain to his base why seceding from the Union was the right thing to do in 1776, but nowadays seceding from the Union is terrible.
Tom

The colonies, however, did not secede from Great Britain, because they were never part of Great Britain. They were colonies. The situation in 1860 was quite different.

Nope.
The colonies were part of the British empire. The wealthy WASP male folks preferred not to remain, so they seceded.
Similarly, the wealthy WASP male folks in the Confederacy decided to secede from the other states. They didn't try to take over power in northern states any more than the founding fathers tried to take power in England.
Like the British, the northern elite launched a war to force the Confederate states to submit. Unlike the British, they were not fighting any other wars and didn't have to cross an ocean to project their power. So they won and British didn't.
Tom

 

[pood]

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

Lincoln was also trying to explain to his base why seceding from the Union was the right thing to do in 1776, but nowadays seceding from the Union is terrible.
Tom

The colonies, however, did not secede from Great Britain, because they were never part of Great Britain. They were colonies. The situation in 1860 was quite different.

Nope.
The colonies were part of the British empire. The wealthy WASP male folks preferred not to remain, so they seceded.
Similarly, the wealthy WASP male folks in the Confederacy decided to secede from the other states. They didn't try to take over power in northern states any more than the founding fathers tried to take power in England.
Like the British, the northern elite launched a war to force the Confederate states to submit. Unlike the British, they were not fighting any other wars and didn't have to cross an ocean to project their power. So they won and British didn't.
Tom

Yes, they were part of the British Empire — meaning they were colonies of the empire and lacked the same rights as residents of the home islands. This crucially was the reason for the Revolution — a revolt against taxation without representation, for example. Moreover, back then, and even today, Britain never had a written Constitution, specifying in what relation overseas colonies stood to the home islands. But practically what those relations were obtained everywhere — a relationship of economic exploitation. The south, by contrast, was legally welded to the North by the Constitution, to which their forbears were signatories. And the south retained all the same rights as all the other states. Their secession was illegal. The colonial revolt against the British Empire was not a secession, but a rightful declaration — a Declaration of Independence.

 

[TomC]

The internet us how you get your news, but it is not the only way to get news.

How do you suppose illiterate Georgians got their news in 1776?
Tom

They were tons and tons of newspapers back then, newspaper reading (and book reading) was very big. People knew their Shakespeare, they knew their bible. Not everyone by any stretch was illiterate. Those who were, had people to read the news to them.

Today, we have public schools, mass media (that includes Wikipedia and snopes and multiple other fact checking options), and people still believe stuff that is incredible.

I never suggested that everyone was illiterate. But let's face it. We're talking about a country full of people who weren't particularly opposed to slavery or genocide. Who didn't think women were smart enough to vote.
And we still live in a country where Trump could very well force his way into POTUS because there are literally millions of people who support him.

The more things change the more they stay the same.
Tom

 

[pood]

Studies show that Colonial-era literacy rates (anong white natives) ran from 60 percent to 100 percent (in Boston). People grew up reading the Bible. They read the Federalist Papers published in newspapers. I think most people today, dumbed down by Twitter and suchlike, would have a hard time parsing the Federalist Papers. Also keep in mind they were not distracted by cellphones, movies, recorded music, television, and other stuff that does not (always) involve reading.

 

[Elixir]

the United States of America, which has always elected its leaders, rather than have them seize power through dint of force

Yeah, The Revolutionary War wasn't forcible at all

Technically, the United States of America did not exist at the time of the Revolutionary War. Technically, it did not exist until the Article of Confederation in 1781.

Technically your early presidents disagreed with this, and Lincoln in particular was adamant that the US existed from the moment that the Declaration of Independence was signed. Technically.

Lincoln was not an “early President”. He wasn’t even born until 1809.

“Honest” Abe was a revisionist?