The Historical Precedents for America's Temperament

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner

Thinking about what it took our forefathers to come to the colonies in the New World is daunting. They encountered unimaginable wildness, Indians, and more. It's sensible to conclude that a peculiar insane optimism is one thing that could account for the post-Columbus migrations from Europe to America.

Spanish explorers like Columbus, Cortez and Pizarro made war on the native societies, even discarding their achievements in medicine and mathematics as they did. But what led to most of this largest-historical-genocide that killed 90% of the New World's population was the Old World diseases brought by the explorers themselves, particularly yellow fever and malaria, although measles and smallpox played a role too. 

So the European immigrants encountered a much-weakened native population, and vast stretches of land they abandoned as they died out. And even then, the Europeans fought them.

To work the land where malaria and yellow fever were rampant, the Europeans imported African slaves who had at least some immunity to these diseases. Slavery thrived between the Mason-Dixon line and the northern border of Argentina, where the vector mosquitos for those diseases were. Slavery was necessary, not optional, to grow all that cotton before mosquito eradication was discovered as a preventive.

Meanwhile, when Andrew Jackson stole the southeastern US from the natives--defying both Georgia's and the US Supreme Courts--the cotton planters were ecstatic. They quickly borrowed to buy slaves and farm what was the Cherokee's land as the Indians walked the "Trail of Tears" to move to what would become Oklahoma.

Then, in 1835, Andy Jackson did what many people even today believe would be a good idea. He paid off national debt entirely and closed down the central bank. This meant there were no publicly-issued dollars. People did their business with monetized gold ("specie") and over 7,000 varieties of private bank notes of varying reliability. 

The planters with their new, stolen land, were unable to pay their loan payments because the cotton surplus made the price of cotton hit the floor, even with 60% of the crop warehoused, and Jackson's debt payoff depleted their dollar savings. A wave of  asset forfeitures and foreclosures ensued. As is the case for all significant reductions of national debt, the economy tanked in the subsequent "Panic of 1837." 

One further bit of encouragement for civil war: slaves tend to not care about long-term soil health, so the typical slaver would deplete his soil, then move west to get more. The North was unwilling to bless making new states in the West slave states.

What can we conclude about the historical precedents for the American temperament? First, unrealistic optimism was an absolute requirement for new immigrants from Europe. Second, perceived economic necessities trumped any reasonable accommodation of the natives, even if they had something to offer. Third, slavery was a clear dedication to putting some (white) people in the driver's seat.

So...has much really changed? 

Meanwhile: JFK and LBJ's Defense chief Robert McNamara dined with his Vietnamese counterparts after the Vietnam war was over and done (and lost by the US). The Vietnamese asked McNamara why the US bothered with Vietnam in the first place. McNamara--by all accounts an intelligent and even charming dinner companion--responded by saying it was to contain China. The Vietnamese were outraged. "We've been fighting China literally for millenia!" was the gist of their response. So that war was simply a waste of men and money. Yet large populations in the US remain optimistic that warfare--now in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran--can have a miraculously wonderful outcome. 

How to respond? Is it sad? Frustrating? Testimony that "The more things change, the more they remain the same"? [sigh!]