A True History of the United States Read online

  “Nobody fuses together two time-honored cliches: ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ and the West Point Academy motto of ‘Duty, Honor and Country’ better than retired US Army Major Daniel Sjursen.”

  — Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Special Agent, 9/11 and Iraq War whistleblower, and Time magazine 2002 Person of the Year

  “Sjursen knows how to inform, provoke, and inspire. Even better, he knows how to be equal parts tough-minded and open-minded. A True History is for anyone wishing to be pushed beyond their comfort zone in the service of forming a more perfect union in America.”

  — William J. Astore, historian, retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), and author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism

  “General Ulysses S. Grant felt the US war with Mexico, 1846–1848, was wrong. In the judgment of real historians like Sjursen, Grant was right. In A True History of the United States, Sjursen explains why such historical candor and accuracy are critical by giving us the reason he taught West Pointers not only that Grant was right in his assessment of our war of aggression and aggrandizement in Mexico but also why historical truth in general is a necessary antidote to the hypocrisy of patriotic nationalism: ‘Exposure to the historical myths and flaws…of the country they might very well die for seemed appropriate. Anything less would have felt obscene.’ Read this book to discover why.”

  — Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to the secretary of state, and professor of government and public policy at the College of William and Mary

  Copyright © 2021 Daniel A. Sjursen

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  An earlier version of this volume’s contents appeared in serialized form at the truthdig.com website under the title “American History for Truthdiggers.”

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to:

  Steerforth Press L.L.C., 31 Hanover Street, Suite 1, Lebanon, New Hampshire 03766

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

  Ebook ISBN 9781586422547

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  CONTENTS

  Preface

  1. Original Sin — American Slavery, American Freedom

  2. Roots in Religious Zealotry

  3. Whose Empire?

  4. Patriots or Insurgents?

  5. Independence and Civil War (Part One)

  6. Whose Revolution? (Part Two)

  7. Flowering or Excess of Democracy

  8. Counter-Revolution of 1787? — New Constitution, New Nation

  9. George Washington’s Turbulent Administration

  10. Liberty Versus Order

  11. The Jeffersonian Enigma

  12. The Forgotten and Peculiar War of 1812

  13. Birth of an Era of Revolutions

  14. Andrew Jackson’s White Male World and the Start of Modern Politics

  15. The Fraudulent Mexican-American War

  16. A Broken Union

  17. The Second American Civil War — The Slow, Perilous Shift to Emancipation

  18. Reconstruction, a Failed Experiment?

  19. Lies We Tell Ourselves About the Old West

  20. Wealth and Squalor in the Progressive Era

  21. The Tragic Dawn of Overseas Imperialism

  22. A Savage War to End All Wars, and a Failed Peace

  23. The Decade That Roared and Wept

  24. FDR and His Deal for a Desperate Time

  25. From Isolationism to a Second World Conflagration

  26. Just How Good Was the “Good War”?

  27. A Cruel, Costly, and Anxious Cold War

  28. JFK’s Cold War Chains

  29. Vietnam, an American Tragedy

  30. Civil Rights, a Dream Deferred

  31. Nixon’s Dark Legacy

  32. Carter’s Cage of Crisis

  33. The Reagan Revolution

  34. Bush the Elder — Struggling in Reagan’s Shadow

  35. Bill Clinton, the New Democrat

  36. Bush II and the Birth of Forever War

  37. The Obama Disappointment

  Epilogue: A Once, Always, and Future Empire

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Index

  PREFACE

  Poll after poll demonstrates that year after year Americans’ basic historical knowledge reaches newly obscene lows. This trend takes on increasing urgency when we observe political leaders and senior policy makers direct foreign and domestic affairs in the apparent absence of knowledge of relevant historical context. Frankly, it is embarrassing to watch, and often tragic in its human consequences.

  I was first struck by the severity of this problem when I returned to my alma mater, the United States Military Academy — West Point — to teach freshman (“plebe”) American History 101. I was straight out of graduate school, my sense of the decisive importance of the subject heightened by my tours in Iraq and Afghanistan where I fought in wars begun and waged seemingly without the faintest sense of the region’s history. That the cadets would likely, almost inevitably, form the increasingly militarized vanguard of future US foreign policy only added urgency.

  Most cadets entered West Point having been taught — and thus understanding — a rather flimsy brand of US history. These otherwise gifted students’ understanding of the American past lacked substance or depth and pivoted on patriotic platitudes. Such young men and women hardly knew the history of the country they had volunteered to kill and die for. That, I thought to myself, is how military fiascoes are made.

  Throughout my teaching tenure I set myself the task of bridging — in some modest way — the gap between what scholars know and what students learn. That process and its challenges motivated me to write this book: an enthusiastic attempt to bridge the perhaps unbridgeable — academic and public history. No doubt the project will be found wanting, but there’s inherent value in the quest, in the very struggle. The skeletal geneses of the chapters that follow were the thirty-eight lesson plans I crafted to impart the broad contours of US history to future leaders of an army at war.

  That the often censorious (some will say downright un-American) analyses herein were introduced to presumably patriotic and conservative West Point cadets may seem shocking. That many other history instructors on the faculty presented not altogether dissimilar concepts may be more surprising still. Nonetheless, as Martin Luther King Jr. often warned: We should not confuse dissent with disloyalty. In today’s politically and culturally tribal times, unfortunately, this seems the reflexive response to any manner of disagreement.

  I make no apologies for having presented combat-bound cadets with undeniable dark facts and some critical conclusions common among esteemed scholars. Exposure to the historical myths and flaws — in addition to the well-worn triumphs — of the country they might very well die for seemed appropriate. Anything less would have felt obscene.

  * * *

  —

  I write this preface amid both a deadly pandemic and widespread demonstrations in communities large and small inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement that have shaken many Americans’ perceptions of the nation’s political and economic systems to the core. Whether these historically unprecedented events will translate into structural or lasting change is unclear, but there’s no better time to translate the version of American History 101 that I taught at West Point to a public audience and to pose the salient question: What, exactly, is exceptional about the United States?

 
America is exceptional — not always in ways that should engender patriotic pride, but rather often in ways that should cause us to reflect, take stock, and strive to do better. Plenty of other countries, for instance, sport equally (if not more) free and democratic societies; dozens are healthier and provide superior medical care; some are even more affluent.

  Hardly any, however — particularly in the wealthier “developed” world — have such vast wealth gaps, disparate health services and outcomes, or traditionally weak left-labor parties. Essentially none imprison quite so many of their citizens, militarily garrison the globe, or fight even a fraction as many simultaneous far-flung wars. Even if we were to set aside any associated value judgments, it bears asking why — historically speaking — this is the case.

  Why does the United States have income inequality rates equivalent to those of its Gilded Age more than a century earlier?

  Why didn’t its citizens insist upon, or achieve, universal public health care before — and especially after — the Second World War, when most of its Western allies and even adversaries did?

  Why was there, at least in comparative terms, never a viable socialist or serious labor party alternative in mainstream American politics?

  Why has an unprecedented class- and especially race-based mass incarceration regime developed in the nation that most loudly proclaims its dedication to freedom?

  And why is it the United States wages undeclared warfare across the planet’s entirety?

  Many of the answers actually lie in the past, in the historical development of US politics and society. These aspects of the darkly exceptionalist present can only be understood through — and partly explained by — a better understanding of four ghastly themes underpinning American history but largely glossed over in standard, introductory survey classes: indigenous genocide, racialized slavery, hyper-capitalism, and militarist imperialism.

  Many people loudly claim to hate history, at least as a subject in their schooling. Given the uneven quality of its teachers and consequent presentation, that’s quite understandable. Still, distaste for the history class hardly tempers the inordinate value nearly all Americans place on the concept of history, at least as they choose to understand it. Most people understand themselves, their family, their community, and their nation through the prism of history. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are, the public policy we craft, and even what we imagine possible.

  1

  ORIGINAL SIN — AMERICAN SLAVERY, AMERICAN FREEDOM

  Origins matter. Every nation-state has an origin myth: a comforting tale of trials, tribulations, and triumphs that form the foundation of “imagined communities.” The United States of America — a self-proclaimed indispensable nation — is as prone to exaggerated origin myths as any society in human history. Most of us are familiar with the popular American origin story: our forefathers, a collection of hardy, pious pioneers, escaped religious persecution in England and founded a New World — a shining beacon in a virgin land. Of course, that story, however flawed, refers to the Pilgrims, and Massachusetts, circa 1620. But that’s not the true starting point for English-speaking society in North America.

  Painting by National Park Service artist Sydney King

  The first permanent colony was in Virginia, at Jamestown, beginning in 1607. Why, then, do our young students dress in black buckle-top hats and re-create Thanksgiving each year? Where is the commemoration of Jamestown and our earliest American forebears? The omission itself tells a story: that of a chosen, comforting narrative — the legend of the Pilgrims — and the whitewashing of a murkier past along the James River.

  The truth is, the United States descends from both origin points — Massachusetts and Virginia — and carries the legacy of each into the twenty-first century. So why do we focus on the Pilgrims and sideline Virginia? A fresh look may help explain.

  The Age of “Discovery”

  When it comes to history — like any story — the starting point is itself informative. The cadets to whom I taught freshman history at West Point were required to take only one semester of US history. So where to start? The official answer — as in so many standard history courses — was Jamestown, Virginia, 1607.

  That, of course, is a fascinating, perhaps absurd, choice. Such a starting point omits several thousand years of Native American history, of varied, complex civilizations from modern Canada to Chile. Time being short, 1607 remains a common pedagogical starting point. As a result, from the beginning our understanding of US history is Eurocentric and narrow, covering only the past four hundred or so years. Consider that Problem No. 1.

  Next, contemplate the language we use to describe the founding of new European colonies. This is, say it with me, the “Age of Discovery.” In 1492, Columbus discovered (even though he wasn’t first) America. Now, that’s a loaded term. Isn’t it just as accurate to say that Native Americans discovered Columbus — a lost and confused soul — when he landed upon their shores?

  When we say Europeans discovered the New World, we’re — not inadvertently — implying that there was nothing substantial going on in the Americas until the Caucasians showed up. Europe has a dated, chronological history, reaching back at least to the ancient Greeks, which most students learn in elementary school and later on in Western Civilization classes. Not so for the Native Americans. Their public history starts in 1492 — or, for Americans, in 1607. What came before, then, hardly matters.

  Inauspicious Beginnings

  Englishmen came neither to escape religious persecution nor to found a New Jerusalem. Not to Virginia, at least. No, the corporate-backed expedition — by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock venture — sought treasure (think gold), to find a northwest passage to India, and to balance the rival Catholic Spaniards. But first and foremost, they pursued profit.

  The expedition barely survived. That should come as little surprise. They chose a malarial swamp for a home. The first ships carried mostly aristocrats — “gentlemen,” as they were then labeled — with a few laborers and carpenters for good measure. Gentlemen didn’t work or deal with the dirty business of farming and settling. But they did like to argue — and there were too many “chiefs” on this voyage. The first party did not include any farmers or women. Only 30 percent survived the first winter. Two years later only sixty out of five hundred colonists survived the “Starving Time.” Over the first seventeen years, six thousand people arrived, but only twelve hundred were alive in 1624. One guy ate his wife.

  So why the disaster? Why the poor site selection and early starvation? First, the colonists had chosen a site inland on the James River because they had feared detection by the more powerful Spanish. But mainly the disaster came down to colonial motivations. Jamestown was initially about profit, not settlement. Corporate dividends, not community. This was the private sector, not a permanent national venture. In that sense matters in early Virginia were not unlike modern American economics.

  Saved by Tobacco, the First Drug Economy

  They never did find much gold or, for that matter, a northwest passage. Then again, they didn’t all starve to death. Rather, the venture was saved by a different sort of “gold” — the cash crop of tobacco. Tobacco changed the entire dynamic of colonization and control in North America. Finally, there was money to be made. The Englishmen shipped the newest vice eastward and pulled a handsome profit in return. Our beloved forefathers were early drug dealers. More migrants now crossed the Atlantic to get in on the tobacco windfall.

  The plentiful gentlemen of Virginia sought to re-create their landed estates in England. Despite significant early conflict with the native Powhatan Confederacy, large tobacco plantations eventually developed along the coast. Who, though, would work these fields? Certainly not the landowners. The burgeoning aristocracy had two choices: lower-class English or Scots-Irish indentured servants, who worked for a fixe
d period in the promise of future acres, and African slaves. Whom to choose? Unsurprisingly, ethics played little role, and cost was the defining factor.

  When mortality was high in the colony’s early years, plantation owners favored the cheaper, mainly white, indentured servants. But as more families planted corn, kept cattle, and improved nutrition, death rates fell and slaves became more appealing. After all, though expensive in upfront costs, slaves worked for life, and the slave owners got to keep their offspring. Nevertheless, for the first several decades an interracial mix of slaves and servants worked the land in Virginia.

  Bacon’s Rebellion and the American Future

  The problem with the tobacco economy was one of space. To be profitable, cash crops require expansive acreage, and in Virginia this meant movement inland. This expansion set the Englishmen on a collision course with local Native Americans. Furthermore, what was plantation society to do about those indentured servants who survived and matriculated? Land would have to be found somewhere — though not near the coasts and early settlements. The gentlemen weren’t about to divide up their own large estates. To maintain their chosen societal model — landed aristocracy, in which the wealthiest 10 percent possessed half the wealth and the bottom 60 percent held less than 10 percent of accumulated wealth — new land would have to be found farther west, in “Indian territory.”

  The thing is, after some bloody, early wars with the Powhatan, most gentlemen preferred a stable, secure status quo. Not another war. That’d be bad for business. However, falling tobacco prices, increased competition from nearby colonies, and the relentless search by the former indentured class for more land brought frontier Virginians into conflict with an easy scapegoat: nearby Native Americans. Frustrated lower-class men — both white and black — rallied behind a young, discontented aristocrat, a firebrand named Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon led his interracial poor people’s army in attacks on local natives and, eventually, on Governor William Berkeley and the establishment gentlemen. In 1675 and 1676, Bacon’s throng destroyed plantations and even burned Jamestown before Bacon died of disease (the “bloody fluxe”) and the rebellion petered out.