My method is, generally, to let the dead speak for themselves. I've pressed their words between these pages, like flowers, for their beauty, or like insects, for their hideousness. The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist ... the teller of truth.In this, Lepore provides the raw and emotion-laden sentences of slaveholders and abolitionists, of conservatives and progressives, of Lincoln and Davis, ... All these then provide me the evidence to be the critic and call fouls, which I have done in every post that is about Lepore's book.
A reminder again that we are testing out the question that Lepore laid out:
The American experiment rests on three political ideas--"these truths," Thomas Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. ...We know already how much America does not fare well regarding these truths within its ever expanding boundaries. How about outside its political boundaries?
Does American history prove these truths, or does it belie them?
In the late 1880s, America had an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to "these truths" when the Spanish-American war began in 1898. "Cubans had been attempting to throw off Spanish rule since 1868, and Filipinos had been doing the same since 1896."
A glorious opportunity to help Cubans and Filipinos with their natural rights and help them regain their sovereignty, right? "Under the terms of the peace, Cuba became independent."
Do not celebrate, yet, for there is more: "Spain ceded Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States, in exchange for $20 million."
Filipinos fought for their independence and were now stuck with the US as their ruler!
A U.S. occupation and American colonial rule were not what the people of Philippines had in mind when they threw off Spanish rule. The Philippines declared its independence, and Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo formed a provisional constitutional government.American revolutionaries declared their independence from a far away England, and a hundred years later, the Philippines was declaring its independence from a far away US. A 100 years makes a huge difference about independence. And, of course, Filipinos not being white folk also mattered!
Aguinaldo worried about "how bitter is slavery." Yes, "slavery" was the word he used!
The war began.
From its start in 1899, the Philippine-American War was an unusually brutal war, with atrocities on both sides, including the slaughter of Filipino civilians. U.S. forces deployed on Filipinos a method of torture known as "water cure," forcing a prisoner to drink a vast quantity of water; most of the victims died. ... Eight million people of color in the Pacific and the Caribbean, from the Philippines to Puerto Rico, were now part of the United States, a nation that already, in practice, denied the right to vote to millions of its own people because of the color of their skin.trump now not caring about Puerto Rico is, therefore, not really new. He is merely practicing good old American politics of white supremacy; at least he tossed the people there a few rolls of paper towels!
Lepore writes that this war "dramatically worsened conditions for people of color in the United States." The jingoistic war chants "filled with racist venom, only further incited American racial hatreds."
"If it is necessary, every Negro in the state will be lynched," the governor of Mississippi pledged in 1903.It was now separate-but-equal--and with lynching!
At this stage, do we really need to check for the answer to this?
The American experiment rests on three political ideas--"these truths," Thomas Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. ...
Does American history prove these truths, or does it belie them?
