Arriving in America: English Civilization Shapes the New World

While Spanish and Portuguese explorers organized most of Central and South America, it was the British, along with French and Dutch, who began the settlement of North America. Later, it would be the Germans who built most of the agricultural and industrial base, but initially, the British shaped the area.

The first groups of settlers from Britain — i.e., from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — journeyed for a variety of reasons. Some went to America for financial opportunities: money could be made by selling animal fur, or by growing tobacco. Others arrived seeking religious freedom: in North America, they could organize their worship and live their faith as they pleased. A third reason for the relocation was political liberty: the thirteen British colonies had an atmosphere which tolerated diverse opinions and public debate. Finally, some came with ambitions of becoming political leaders: in the New World, ordinary people could be elected to town councils or colonial legislatures, something rarely possible in Britain.

Society in North America, specifically in the regions that would become the United States, was built by ideas and cultures from many nations: Germany, France, Holland, etc. But the early years, and some of the most formative influences, came from the English, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski writes:

Crossing the Atlantic during the seventeenth century was a perilous voyage, entailing weeks or months of cramped quarters, inadequate food, and unsanitary conditions. Yet in the late 1500s Englishmen had begun to hazard the venture, and in 1607 they planted their first permanent settlement on the North American continent at Jamestown. By the early 1730s, thirteen separate colonies hugged the seaboard. Although great diversity prevailed among the colonies, most colonists shared a common English heritage and clung to it tenaciously. Their religious attitudes, economic views, political thoughts, and military ideals and institutions were all grounded in English history. In no aspect of colonial life was this heritage more important than in regard to military matters. The colonists' most revered military institution (the militia) and their most cherished military tradition (fear of a standing army) both came from England.

The difference between the ‘militia’ and the ‘standing army’ shaped American history for several centuries. The ‘militia’ is a group formed of ordinary people — farmers, lawyers, teachers, doctors, etc. — who had some basic military training and could be called upon when needed. The men in the militia weren’t full-time soldiers, and spent their weekdays at their normal jobs. Only in cases of emergency were they called upon to meet and go into action.

By contrast, the ‘standing army’ is a group of full-time professional soldiers, who usually wear uniforms, don’t have other employment or jobs, and live in some type of army housing.

The settlers from England brought with them a distrust of ‘standing armies’ and a preference for ‘militia’ units. They passed this disposition on to the other settlers in North America. The British suspicion of standing armies arose from the fact that, when a full-sized trained and equipped army is not usefully occupied, government leaders can use it to harass ordinary people.

The appropriate use of an army is for it to fight with other armies from other countries. But the English government had used the army to intimate civilians into paying excessive taxes, silencing their political opinions, and preventing diverse forms of religious worship. In summary, the army was a ‘muscle’ or ‘enforcer’ for the whims of the King or the Parliament. Instead of protecting the British people, the army was being used to intimidate the British people. So the attitude developed among the British: they didn’t really like the army, and prefered to have a militia.

The events that created this attitude in England were followed by events in America that reinforced the attitude. British soldiers in North America were supposed to be there to protect the colonists who’d settled there; but the colonists were capable of defending themselves, as they did on several occasions, and didn’t need the British army. But the British government placed extra taxes on the settlers to pay for the army to be there. So the settlers were forced to pay for an army they didn’t need.

It got worse. The British soldiers were used, in America as in England, to harass the local population.

These circumstances merely reinforced the anti-army attitude which the settlers brought with them from England.

So, the settlers turned to the idea of the ‘militia’ — which turned out to be less costly, to be a more effective way of defending themselves, and to be less of a danger to the rights and freedoms of the settlers.

The American militia grew to be not only a powerful fighting force, but also a part of the American culture and American mentality. At that time, as at the present time, a large percentage of Americans had a rifle or other firearm at home anyway. Men and women were familiar with rifles, knew how to use them, and used them on a regular basis to provide food for their families. American villages had a communal spirit: neighbors helped each other with barnraising and harvesting, with quilting and tanning, with butchering and fence building. So it was an obvious step that they should help each other in the defense of their villages, joining together to form a local militia.

The militia was a local institution, not commanded by officials in a far-away government center. The militia was self-organized, self-funded, and self-directed.

In this way, we can see one source in the American preference for local government over national government, for self-government over imposed power, and for private citizen initiatives instead of enforced tax-funded projects.

The Quest for Freedom and Equality: Liberalism vs. Classical Liberalism

Three distinctive features of the United States are the establishment of freedom and equality as goals, the steady effort applied in the service of these goals, and the measurable forward movement toward these goals. This is a consistent American trend over several centuries.

In political vocabulary, this can be expressed in a variety of ways. It is worth noting that the word ‘liberalism’ has several different meanings. A particular type of liberalism called ‘classical liberalism’ was and is found as a foundation for the peculiarly American values of freedom, equality, and individualism.

Classical liberalism is found in the thoughts and writings of authors like John Locke, Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and James Otis, along with many others who influenced the American Revolution in the 1700s. Classical liberalism places emphasis on the freedom of the individual: personal political liberty. Classical liberalism wants to protect the individual from government control, taxation, and regulation.

By contrast, the word ‘liberalism’ was used in a different way in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The liberalism of the late 1900s and early 2000s desired to regulate personal behavior, public speech, and economic transactions. This type of liberalism also sought higher taxes.

So the ‘classical liberalism’ of the 1700s and early 1800s is different from the liberalism of later eras. It was classical liberalism that began and completed the fight against slavery, as historian Jonathon Bean writes:

In the era of antislavery, classical liberal voices for racial freedom drew upon the Constitution, Christianity, and belief in the right to self-ownership.

The antislavery movement drew from a diverse set of philosophical underpinnings: the classical liberal framework of the U.S. Constitution, the values of freedom and equality as articulated by Christianity, and the somewhat abstract concept of self-ownership. The ideological and intellectual matrix of the abolitionist movement was robust.

These ideas were intertwined with each other in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s original draft argued that “these truths” were “sacred and undeniable,” while the final draft called them “self-evident.” Jefferson’s draft stated that all people are created “equal and independent,” while the final draft said simply that they were “equal.” These differences may be subtle, but the fact that the changes were made between the first draft and the final draft show how logically, carefully, and philosophically the members of the Second Continental Congress were thinking and writing.

The Declaration of Independence was also a touchstone of abolitionism quoted and discussed by James Forten, David Walker, Lysander Spooner, Frederick Douglass, and nearly every other antislavery writer in the tumultuous period leading up to the Civil War.

African-American leaders like James Forten, David Walker, and Frederick Douglass used the Declaration of Independence to express and support their views, because it combined various versions of Natural Law thought. The tradition of Natural Law asserts that there is a foundation in the structure of the universe which determines what justice is, i.e., that justice is not the arbitrary opinion of some person or group of people, but rather that justice stands objectively and enduringly above, beyond, and outside of mere personal opinion.

Natural Law theory has a diverse range of supporters: some argue that Natural Law is the result of reason, that people who think logically and precisely will come to a clear conclusion about what justice is; others argue that Natural Law is divine, and has been established and articulated by God; a third group argues that Natural Law is known intuitively and instinctively by people.

The Declaration of Independence brought these three different groups together, allowing them to cooperate in the American Revolution, and in opposing slavery.

Natural Law theory is a foundation for the antislavery movement, because it was necessary to show that slaver is unjust and immoral. It is not enough to say merely that slavery is unjust in the opinion of some people; it must be demonstrated that slavery is unjust in an objective and absolute sense, as Jonathan Bean explains:

Strong, often violent, opposition to antislavery activists led them to develop a coherent tradition that dominated the civil rights movement well into the twentieth century and still persists today.

As Jefferson phrased it in his first draft, people are created equal, and “from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.” The final draft says that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Again, the difference is slight, but the mindfulness devoted to the wording is detailed.

While Jefferson spoke of “the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the final draft shortened this summary to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Early African-American leaders were keenly aware of the irony of the fact that several of the men who laid the groundwork for the antislavery movement were themselves slave owners. These early black leaders embraced these documents, but certainly did not approve of every detail of the men’s lives.

Although the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was a slaveholder, that fact did not undermine the meaning and power of the natural rights theory set forth in that famous document, which mentions God four times as the source of those “unalienable Rights.”

The power of the words — and more importantly, the power of the ideas — put forth by the classical liberals of the 1700s was strong enough that it would not be nullified by failings and weaknesses of the authors who expressed them.

It was the power of classical liberalism thought that exposed the falsehoods presented by the pro-slavery political leaders. By means of careful analysis, the classical liberals understood that there was a dichotomy between authentic Christianity and fake Christianity. Slaveholders sought to justify their actions by appealing to a counterfeit version of Christianity which they manufactured to justify their crimes.

Classical liberals understood that true Christianity supported Natural Law theory and was therefore opposed to slavery. One of the greatest and earliest religious conflicts in American history is the struggle between real Christianity and fake Christianity, as Jonathan Bean reports:

Throughout this period, classical liberal Christians found themselves fighting proslavery interpretations of Christianity advanced by southerners.

So it was that the abolitionist movement represented a harmonization of diverse views. Whether people held that Natural Law was known by logical reasoning, by spiritual faith, or by intuition and instinct, they could all agree on Natural Law theory and its opposition to slavery. So it was that both men and women, both white Americans and black Americans, agreed from early 1700s onward that American Revolution and its drive for independence was identical to the demand that slavery be ended.

This diverse set of thinkers, agreed on this unifying thought, together rallied around the words of the Declaration of Independence:

In response, classical liberals invoked the concept that “all men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It was ‘classical liberalism,’ not later forms of liberalism, which both launched the American Revolution and launched the abolitionist movement. The drive for American independence and the drive to end slavery were both fueled by Natural Law. The quest toward individual political liberty, toward personal freedom, and toward respect for the individual person arose from a concept of equality; the notion of equality arose from the idea of human nature in which all people equally share, and which demands both independence for America and freedom for slaves.

The Enlightenment’s Revolution: America’s Reasonable Rebellion in 1776

Historians have long asserted that the cultural and philosophical trends lumped together under the label “The Enlightenment” were decisive in shaping the American Revolution. The independence movement in North America in the 1770s could not have happened a few centuries earlier.

To be sure, there have been rebellions throughout history. But, e.g., the German Peasants’ War of 1524 and 1525 had no ideological system, no analysis of history, and no rational or empirical program to justify or explain itself, and had little idea what it would do if it succeeded.

By contrast, the American Revolution analyzed both the past and the present, evaluating and comparing both. The independence movement based its actions on an examination of human nature and a systematic worldview, as historian Jill Lapore writes:

“I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” Thomas Paine, the spitfire son of an English grocer, wrote in Common Sense, in 1776. Kings have no right to reign, Paine argued, because, if we could trace hereditary monarchy back to its beginnings — “would we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their first rise” — we’d find “the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang.” James Madison explained Americans’ historical skepticism, this deep empiricism, this way: “Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?” Evidence, for Madison, was everything.

Obviously influenced by John Locke’s political writings, the founders of the United States were also influenced by Locke’s philosophical writings, and by the not-so-obvious link between Locke’s politics and his epistemology.

The independence movement studied the past, not in order to slavishly imitate it, but rather to take only the best from it. Indeed, the American Revolution contains within itself the consciousness of major points in world history: working backward from the English Bill of Rights of 1689, to the Magna Carta 1215, to Roman law, to Greek political thought, to the historical events recorded in both the New and Old Testaments.

Rather than viewing history as simply precedent to be copied, the American Revolution saw history as a data set, a collection of evidence, and the task was to formulate conclusions based on the raw material of history.

“A new era for politics is struck, Paine wrote, his pen aflame, and “a new method of thinking hath arisen.” Declaring independence was itself an argument about the relationship between the present and the past, an argument that required evidence of a very particular kind: historical evidence. That’s why most of the Declaration of Independence is a list of historical claims. “To prove this,” Jefferson wrote, “let fact be submitted to a candid world.”

Writers have been using ‘The American Experiment’ as a phrase to capture the distinct nature of the country’s origins. This phrase has been used at least since an 1860 article in the New York Daily Tribune and perhaps since even earlier dates.

In any case, this phrase articulates the rational approach found in the writings of the independence movement. This was no rebellion of blind anger. It was a deliberate response, not only to the immediate aggression of Britain toward America, but also to the development of civilization over millennia, and the rational analysis of that development.

Facts, knowledge, experience, proof. These words come from the law. Around the seventeenth century, they moved into what was then called “natural history”: astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology. By the eighteenth century they were applied to history and to politics, too. These truths: this was language of reason, of enlightenment, of inquiry, and of history. In 1787, then, when Alexander Hamilton asked “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force,” that was the kind of question a scientist asks before beginning an experiment. Time alone would tell.

Unlike the Constitution of the United Kingdom, which is a haphazard accretion of precedents accumulated over centuries, ad hoc inventions dealing with specific situations rather than general principles, the Constitution of the United States is an expression of an axiomatic body of thought, stated in general principles so as to apply to various unforeseen situations and developments.

The intellectual foundation of the American Revolution is found in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and The Crisis, in the speeches and writings of James Otis, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry. It is found in the works of John Locke, and in both the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers.

There was no philosophical or ideological program behind the Constitution of the United Kingdom. To be sure, the American Revolution respected and even copied certain aspects of that British Constitution. But instead of allowing a series of situational precedents to slowly accumulate into a structure of governance, the independence movement chose to begin with foundational principles which can be stated in ways which free them from a specific context and thereby capture a general truth in paradigmatic form which can then be applied to new situations as they arise. This was the rationalist bent in the creation of the United States.

President Coolidge Speaks at Howard University: A Civil Rights Milestone

From the beginning of his presidency, Calvin Coolidge made civil rights one of his administration’s top priorities, as is seen not only in his words, but also in his actions. Shortly after taking office in 1923, Coolidge appealed to Congress and obtained significant funding for the medical school at Howard University.

The next year, 1924, Coolidge made history by giving the commencement address there. Howard University is what is now called a ‘HBCU’ — a historically Black college or university. Coolidge was the first U.S. president to ever speak at the graduation ceremonies of a HBCU.

Coolidge’s speech at Howard was a major advance for civil rights, as historian Kurt Schmoke writes:

Coolidge gave the commencement address at Howard and signaled a significant change in progressive race relations. In reading his words it must be recalled that he spoke at a time when separate but equal was the law of the land, when lynchings trumped due process in criminal cases involving black men, and when the most recent Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, had praised a film which glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

Words alone, however, were not enough for Calvin Coolidge. Concrete actions were needed to promote opportunities for African-Americans. His objective was to move millions of Blacks from the lower classes to the middle classes, as a report from the Coolidge Foundation explains:

President Coolidge called for funds to be appropriated to establish a medical school at Howard University in his first State of the Union message to Congress in December 1923. “About half a million dollars is recommended for medical courses at Howard University to help contribute to the education of 500 colored doctors needed each year,” the President said. By this act, Coolidge hoped to improve the state of medical care for the black population. He also sought to grow the black middle class by adding more black professionals to society.

1924 was an election year, and Coolidge’s appearance at Howard University sent a signal: Coolidge was firmly opposed to the KKK. He and his predecessor, President Warren Harding, had also promoted anti-lynching laws in Congress.

But Coolidge’s opponent in the election, the Democratic Party, had failed to make a clear anti-Klan statement in the platform adopted at their convention. The platform failed to make any statements about race or civil rights, and failed to endorse anti-lynching laws.

The Democratic Party was divided. Many anti-Klan Democrats didn’t vote for their party’s nominee in the general election in November 1924. The Democrat nominee, John Davis, did make an anti-Klain statement, but the party failed to back him up.

Entry into the middle class was important for African-Americans in the 1920s. During Coolidge’s presidency, the number of Blacks in federal employment reached a high of 51,882 in 1928, up from 22,540 in 1910. This represented measurable progress as African-Amercans left the lower classes and moved upward.

Coolidge sent a continuous series of signals, by words and by actions, of his dedication to civil rights.

Education as a Gateway into the Middle Class: President Coolidge Opens the Door for African-Americans

The civil rights movement has long understood the importance of education. Indeed, although the era from the early 1950s to the late 1960s is often called the ‘civil rights era,’ Blacks knew that education was a major opportunity decades earlier.

President Calvin Coolidge saw a link between the ascent into the middle class and contributions to society: as African-Americans rose into white-collar college-educated professions, they also played more important roles in the country.

Encouraging Black students to become physicians would benefit not only the African-American community, but the entire nation. So Coolidge worked to inspire Black students to go to medical school, as historian Kurt Schmoke writes:

In his First Annual Address to Congress in 1923 he wrote: “About half a million dollars is recommended for medical courses at Howard University to help contribute to the education of 500 colored doctors needed each year.” This appropriation was to grow over the years, leading to the production of healthcare and other professionals who would stimulate the growth of an African-American middle class and develop leaders in all walks of life, nationally and internationally.

Coolidge also understood that professional advancement is closely associated with political liberty. When Charles Gardner, otherwise unknown to history, wrote to Coolidge to protest the fact that the Republican Party was nominating Black candidates for Congress, Coolidge defended the party’s promotion of African-American engagement in the political process, as a publication from the Coolidge Foundation makes clear:

Not only that, but Coolidge spoke out in defense of the political enfranchisement of blacks. In 1924 Army Sergeant Charles Gardner wrote to Coolidge in protest when Republicans nominated a black dentist as their candidate in New York’s 21st Congressional District, based in Harlem. Coolidge’s response encapsulated his disdain for racism: “th­e suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party.”

In September 1923, Coolidge hosted leaders of the Negro National Educational Congress at the White House. Calvin Coolidge’s civil rights strategy emphasized the connection between advancement into the educated professions and participation in the electoral process.

Howard University: How President Coolidge Empowered Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The presidency of Calvin Coolidge marked a high point for civil rights. Coolidge took several significant actions designed to help African-Americans move from the lower classes into the middle class. Several of those actions centered around higher education.

In 1924, Coolidge became the first U.S. president to give a commencement address at a Black college — an HBCU (Historically Black College or University).

His decision to speak at Howard University was not random. It was paired with two other aspects of his administration. First, his speech was linked to his successful efforts to increase the number of African-American students who would study medicine. The Coolidge administration effected an increase in the number of Black physicians in the United States: this meant an increase in the number of Blacks who moved from the lower class to the middle class by studying for a white-collar, college-educated profession, as historian Kurt Schmoke writes:

The 30th president, Republican Calvin Coolidge, was a major supporter of Howard University and an overlooked figure in advancing the cause of racial equality in the United States. In one of his earliest acts as president, Coolidge proposed and persuaded Congress to pass an appropriation bill that reinforced the unique relationship between Howard and the federal government.

Secondly, Coolidge’s landmark speech at Howard’s graduation ceremonies was linked to his 1924 election campaign. While Coolidge took a clear stand in rejecting the KKK and promoting anti-lynching laws, his opponent, the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidential contest, was left to defend his party’s platform, which equivocated on racial questions, and failed to clearly reject the Klan.

Coolidge’s presence on Howard University’s campus, located in Washington, D.C., also symbolized a continuity between Coolidge and his predecessor, President Warren Harding. Like Coolidge, Harding had also been a civil rights advocate and a champion of anti-lynching laws, as a report from the Coolidge Foundation notes:

President Calvin Coolidge is known for many things, including his championing of limited government, his deft handling of the 1919 Boston Police Strike, and his responsible stewardship of the federal budget. But how often do we recall his pioneering gestures to improve race relations in the fraught decade of the 1920s?

The 1920s were fertile years for civil rights in the United States. Preceded by the racist and segregationist Wilson administration (1913 to 1920), and followed by FDR’s neglect of African-American concerns (1933 to 1945), the years of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge were years in which Blacks gained both political liberty and a concrete move into the middle class.

Coolidge vs. the Klan: How an American President Opposed the KKK

During the U.S. presidential election of 1924, the Ku Klux Klan was one of several issues to gain public attention. The Klan had significant influence in the southern states, and even had a presence in some states north of the Mason-Dixon line.

The Klan dreamed of obtaining the endorsement of a presidential candidate. It was clear that Calvin Coolidge, the incumbent, would never do this. Coolidge had become president in 1923, when his predecessor Warren Harding died. Coolidge had been vice president, and so immediately became president.

Both Coolidge and Harding had been steadily anti-Klan.

The KKK, having no hope of receiving support from the Republicans, turned to the “the Democratic convention of 1924, where many delegates were fervently pro-Klan,” as historian Charles Johnson writes.

The Democratic Party was split, half wanting to embrace the Klan, and half wanting not to publicly endorse the Klan. The debate went on for days; neither side could get a solid majority to overcome the other.

The eventual Democratic nominee was John Davis, who finally denounced the Klan, but because the Democratic Party failed to denounce the Klan, many voters “bolted from the Democratic nominee,” in the words of Charles Johnson.

John Davis denounced the Klan, but because the Democratic party didn’t, it was clear that it was a personal statement by Davis, and not the party’s view. The 1924 Democratic platform committee had discussed some statement about the KKK, but in the end, the platform said nothing about the Klan, about race, or about lynching.

Coolidge and Harding, by contrast, had both endorsed anti-lynching laws to protect Black lives.

In the midst of the Klan’s efforts to make trouble, Coolidge calmly snubbed the KKK by becoming the first U.S. President to deliver a commencement address at a historically Black college. In June 1924, Coolidge spoke in Washington, D.C., at the campus of Howard University. The Klan was enraged, and Coolidge was quietly pleased that he’d managed to do something to promote both the civil rights and the economic opportunities of African-Americans.

As Klan leaders became nearly apoplectic at Coolidge’s support of the Black community, the Coolidge campaign mocked the KKK by choosing a campaign slogan: “Keep Cool with Coolidge.” Comedians quickly changed it to “Keep Kool with Koolidge.”

In any case, African-Americans voted in large numbers for Coolidge in 1924. They weren’t the only ones voting for Coolidge. Citizens who’d formerly voted for the Democratic Party were dismayed when the Democrats failed to take a clear stance against the KKK, and so many of them also voted for Coolidge.

In the end, Calvin Coolidge won the election by an unprecedented landslide. He was enormously popular during the 1920s.