Secretary's Exposition of American History at the Kraft dinner, November 13, 1952
Once the shock of the disappearance of British power (in America??) had been absorbed, a lot of things began to happen and happen fast, which are not unlike what goes on in the United Nations.
The ruling class in the colonies in the middle of the 18th Century were people who combined the entrepreneur, the aristocrat, the land owner, the employer - all rolled into one. He was the fellow who made this whole rough, rude country. This man was met at every turn by restrictions imposed by the British Government 3000 miles away, many of which restrictions were very good and totally understandable from the point of view of the British Government in London. They were not allowed to go beyond the Alleghenies. This was wholly understandable because the limits of the British protecting power were finite. For the same reasons that in some places we have buildings only eight stories high - because we don't have a fire brigade that can put out a fire on the ninth floor - the colonists were told they could not go beyond the Alleghenies. They would get in trouble with the French and that would make trouble in London. But this meant a restriction that they could not go into the incredibly rich timber areas, nor into the Mississippi valley. That restriction was irritating. The whole mercantile system was irritating, whereby trade had to go through the center at London and could not take place directly between the colonies and other trading points. Timber of the size needed for the British Navy could not be cut, and the Americans did not care about the British
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Navy; they wanted to cut their own timber. At every point they were met by restrictions imposed on the ruling, powerful, directing groups by a government which was far away and, most important of all, had shown its inability to govern. (Illustration of this is Braddock's defeat.)
What happens when people who want to resist want support? They generalize their position. They don't ask support to fight against timber restrictions. They talk about taxation without representation, and each generalization leads to broader generalizations. Until finally they get to the broadest generalization; which is that all men are created equal.
Nothing could have been more unreal than the statement of these principles in the 18th Century. The people who said it did not believe it. The property owners believed in property requirements. They had indentured slaves. They had everything that was contrary to the great broad generalization. The most conservative, most aristocratic, and one of the finest of all 18th Century Gentlemen led a revolution based on a generalization in which he did not believe in the slightest, other than that someone was attacking his people. He was a simple gentleman.
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After the end of the war, all hell broke loose. Those who had written the checks brought them in and asked to have them cashed.
Then begins one of the great principles of American life, which is that the price of union is compromise. And compromise reaches almost the lowest common denominator. Immediately after the revolution, the first thing that happened was a civil war. What was the reason for Shay's Rebellion? It had the whole ferment of the disenfranchised against the propertied class. But the critical point was the regulations of the Government that whiskey could not be made without a license and paying tax. The mountaineers of Pennsylvania said they had fought the British for just this principle. It was the first cashing of the checks of the generalizations of our revolutionary period. From then on, they came in faster and faster. All property qualifications for franchise were thrown out. Indentured servants were done away with. Slavery became more and more of an issue. All free males could vote. All restrictions were thrown loose with the westward migration.
We moved into the second great phase of compromise, which was to try to work out solutions by which Southern elements could survive on a system which was primarily based on protection. This was unsolvable. It could not be worked out. This was the great test of our ability to compromise and we could not. Our Civil War came because of the irrepressible
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conflict between protection and agriculture which was getting less and less profitable and had been supported on slavery. It did not have the economic basis on which to live. We nearly destroyed ourselves.