These Truths - A History of the United States - Jill Lepore - 789 pages
Jill Lepore's book These Truths was published in 2018 to provide a one-volume history of America from 1492 to the present that could provide a better context to understand the conflicts -- economic, social and thus political -- the country has faced throughout that history. By purposely limiting the attempt to a single volume (though a big one at 789 pages), Lepore had to jettison what might be characterized as "Schoolhouse Rock" / tourist trap history encased in impenetrable / distorting mythology such as the first Thanksgiving, the Boston Tea Party, etc. The Revolutionary War is referenced over roughly fourteen pages. The Civil War itself is touched upon over seventeen pages. Instead, most of the book focuses on the events AROUND those events, leading up to them and following them, as different interests fought to gain advantage and weaken their perceived opponents.
The title of the book, of course, draws from some of the most quoted language in the American Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The thesis of the book is that the pattern of conflict throughout America's entire history doesn't make much sense if everyone involved shared the same understanding of the truths so stated and believed in them. The history of America makes much more sense if one recognizes that many of its founding principles were NOT at the time and ARE NOT now "self-evident" because they were intentionally written with ambiguity or blatant exclusionary bias in order to pass political muster at the time of origin. Once the intentionally compromised "principals" were set down in writing and adopted as the country's starting point, they immediately triggered continuous conflict between the powerful and the excluded, the wealthy and the poor, the owners versus the laborers, the whites versus the minorities and men versus women as those left on the outside attempted to win equal standing in society.
In some sense, attempting to learn American history by looking at the highlights is akin to trying to understand the sun's corona by looking directly at the sun. Until the sun is blocked with an eclipse, the glare of the core will obscure the events around the fringe. The same is true for history. An understanding of where and when the major events occurred is needed but studying around the edges of those events can cut through years of fact polishing and identify contradictions with accepted history that provide a more accurate picture of what happened and why.
Lepore accomplishes that within These Truths by providing insights into aspects of our politics and processes that are invisible givens -- processes or states of existence physically seen every day which are not treated as anything special because they are viewed as always having been present. For some of the processes, if they are thought about at all, they are assumed to be "obvious" because they provide such clear benefits to citizens. The book abounds with examples Lepore provides that break these assumptions and, in some cases, identify original motivations that were completely opposite of current day assumptions and concepts of justice. As I read texts like this, I cut up Post-Its into thin strips that can be tacked onto a page precisely at a sentence worth coming back to. After completing the book, my "Post-it markup" involved over fifty tags of these surprising / counterintuitive "givens." Some examples:
Secret Ballots -- Secret ballots were not implemented as a better solution for eliminating the possibility of coercion at the polls but as a barrier to prevent illiterate blacks from voting. Prior to secret ballots, ballots were often pre-printed with a slate of party candidates and voters could bring a ballot with them to the polling place but didn't necessarily have to be able to read. Adoption of secret ballots banned the use of pre-printed ballots, requiring each voter to read a ballot at the polling place, posing an obstacle to the illiterate. While it might seem logical to require a voter to be at least intelligent enough to be able to read, the motivation for the change was racist, since the proportion of illiterate blacks was much higher than whites.
Semantic Ricochets -- Discriminatory language in the original Constitution has led to tortured logic in Supreme Court rulings which go on to create additional odd political rifts. The Muller vs Oregon case of 1908 established the constitutionality of labor laws but did so by creating the right to enact laws with specific language providing specific protection for women because overwork "is more disastrous to the health of women than of men, and entails upon them more lasting injury." That language created an unexpected (and perverse, from a modern perspective) split in the larger women's rights movement. Would passage of an "equal rights" amendment mean women would lose these protections and wind up working under the same conditions as men? That fear was effective at splitting the women's rights bloc through the 1970s.
Electoral College Blowback -- The Bush/Gore race was not the first Presidential race where the popular vote winner "lost" under murky circumstances. The 1876 Presidential race pitted Republican Rutherford B Hayes against Democrat Samuel Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote but Republicans disputed votes in three states, leading to a brokered deal in electoral college voting. Under the deal, the Democratic Party found a few electors willing to switch their vote to the Republican IN EXCHANGE for the Republican Party agreeing to eliminate Reconstruction efforts in the South. Both parties kept their side of the agreement, Hayes was elected President, Republicans withdrew federal troops from the South and Southern legislatures immediately began enacting new segregationist laws and supporting them with state resources and forces like the Ku Klux Klan. As a result of this deal, the promotion of civil rights was abandoned by the Republicans and omitted as a major driver in politics for ninety more years.
Personhood for Corporations -- The legal concept that corporations are "persons" for the purposes of "equal protection" under the Fourteenth Amendment stems from the case Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886. The railroad sued the county over a tax issue, claiming the tax violated the corporation's rights as a "person." The corporation's case was argued in front of the Supreme Court by Roscoe Conkling who had also served on a commission that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment and -- as of 1886 - was the only living member of that committee. He claimed the committee's discussions and the intent in the amendment itself was that corporations were included in the definitions of "persons" which is why the amendment did not use the word citizen instead of person. However, there are no surviving written records of the committee's deliberations to back his claim. The Supreme Court nonetheless based its ruling on that "fact." Author Lepore includes a quote from Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in 1937.. "Only one half of one percent of the Fourteenth Amendment cases that came before the court had anything to do with African Americans or former slaves, while over half the cases were about protecting the rights of corporations."
Abortion Politics -- Until the mid 1970s, most Republicans and evangelicals supported family planning and abortion rights. In 1965, former Presidents Eisenhower and Truman co-chaired a Planned Parenthood committee aimed at protecting access to contraception. Only after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1971 did Republicans begin shifting. Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchannan convinced Nixon that abortion was a hot-button issue with Catholics and could be an effective lever in the 1972 Presidential campaign and Nixon, despite despising Catholics along with many other groups, cynically switched sides to capture that bloc of voters to help ensure his win in 1972.
Across the five hundred plus years of history covered, nearly all of the events covered in the book map to a common theme. After adopting the Constitution as "America 2.0" after the failed Articles of Confederation, the leaders creating 2.0 did not view the resulting platform as perfect. All viewed it as a "least worst" guideline that could have a chance at passage across all states. All involved KNEW it obviously failed to provide a consistent answer for slavery. Abolitionists feared it not only failed to set an end-date for slavery in existing states but failed to address how slavery might expand with new states. Slaveholders feared it didn't permanently protect slavery where it existed or leave enough daylight to ensure it could expand into new territories and states. All involved KNEW that the document explicitly omitted any reference to women. Even prior to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams noted the following in a letter to husband John Adams whose crafting of the Constitution for the State of Massachusetts in 1780 was used as a template for much of the US Constitution.
I long to hear that you have declared an independancy—and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar [sic] care and attention is not paid to the Laidies [sic] we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
Adams' reply to his wife?
As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our struggle has unloosed the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient -- that schools and Colleges were grown turbulent -- that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. Depend upon it. We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.
Stated another way, the leaders involved in creating the Constitution weren't trapped within some time machine bubble of eighteenth century language, culture and mores that blinded them to the obvious racial / gender / economic inequities and hypocrisies in the language they were adopting. These inequities were the cause of intense debate for DECADES prior to the Revolution. The founders toiled for MONTHS in 1787 to exclude language that might correct the flaws we now see as obvious and willingly / consistently "under-interpreted" most of the lofty language about "all men are created equal" and "unalienable rights endowed by their Creator" that made it into the final document. The final result was not an optimistic "stretch goal" statement of principles helping everyone but instead it was a collection of compromises addressing the desires of the rich and powerful while minimizing the extension of rights to additional interests -- women, slaves, minorities.
That's a crucial point to understand in the present. A prior post on
Constitutional Gene Therapy stated one way current political battles are framed depicts a struggle between two opposing assumptions about our Constitution:
On the Republican side, the argument is basically that the Founding Fathers created a nearly perfect set of principals whose effectiveness in the intervening two hundred forty six years has been sullied only by modern generations reading into the original language intents that were never there instead of legislating new intents or explicitly amending the Constitution to allow such intents if not present in these "originalist" interpretations. If only we could "get back" to the original undistorted interpretation of a document created by slaveholders that didn't provide voting rights to women, we could straighten things out.
On the Democratic side, the argument is basically that the Founding Fathers created a nearly perfect set of principals for continually evolving to a "more perfect union" and that progress towards perfection is being slowed down by special interests corrupting the systems that allow the forces defined by the Constitution to function properly. In other words, the country didn't start in a perfect place, the country is certainly not IN a perfect place, but the systems in place SHOULD be capable of working to make progress over time if used ethically in good faith.
That post made the point that both arguments are incorrect. Our battles stem from the fact that the Constitution itself was flawed at its inception and remains flawed in many ways, despite many amendments. Lepore's book cements that point and provides quotes from the most famous founding fathers and leaders since which explicitly confirm THEY didn't view the document as perfect.
From Gouverneur Morris, addressing the Constitutional Convention during debates over slavery and the three-fifths compromise that counted slaves for purposes of setting numbers of Representatives but excluded slaves from counting as citizens with rights:
The inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures for their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.
From John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania:
What will be said of this new principle of founding a right to govern Freemen on a power derived from slaves? The omitting the Word [of slavery] will be regarded as an Endeavour to conceal a principle of which we are ashamed.
From Benjamin Franklin, addressing the Constitutional Convention on its last day in September 1787 as leaders reviewed the final draft to be submitted for ratification to the states:
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more respect to the judgement of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.
Finally, there is Abraham Lincon, in 1862, in the middle of a Civil War stemming from these exact flaws in our original constitutional DNA:
We must disenthrall ourselves, then we can save the country.
Lincon's quote is worth remembering amid current debates. Anyone claiming to promote policies that take us back to a golden era of America guided by the original, undiluted, undistorted wisdom of the founding fathers either has no comprehension of history or is selling a Disney-fied version of history to mask the true intent of their actions. The existence of conflicts over rights between men and women, between ethnic blocs, between individuals versus corporations and between the governed and the government isn't a reflection of the country straying from its founding principals. Those conflicts are frequently the direct consequence of the failure of those original principals as written and interpreted to meet the needs of citizens -- in history or in the present. Lapore's book
These Truths serves as a useful guide to seeing that pattern across the entire existence of the United States and appreciating the gray nuances of reality versus the false, simplified black and white view served up by politicians and the media.
WTH
