I've always had a soft spot for Henry Clay in my heart, and I'm excited to see him as President! Subbed!
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CHAPTER IV: MANIFEST DESTINY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
America’s Triumvirate: Clay, Calhoun, Webster and The Quebec War
America’s Triumvirate: Clay, Calhoun, Webster and The Quebec War
The famous trio of antebellum politicians: Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster were among the three men who all “opposed” Manifest Destiny. Although, as I’ve already covered—that “opposition” is a bit misleading for many reasons. None of these men envisioned an America that did not expand from coast to coast. Although during the high watermark of westward expansion, all three had come to try and stem the tide. We’ve already looked at Calhoun, so we won’t retread that ground we’ve already covered. Instead, we’ll look at the major event in Clay’s presidency that was meant to prevent westward expansion, but instead, ironically hastened its consummation. And Clay had an ally in Massachusetts Senator and fellow elitist Daniel Webster.
Webster, like Clay, was an outspoken proponent of modernization, industrialization, and of banking interests. He agreed with the general Whig program that saw westward expansion as a threat to eastern modernization and industrialization. Also like Clay, it would be wrong to characterize him as an anti-expansionist. And with Whig majorities in both houses of Congress, for the first and only time in the Whig Party’s lifespan,* he was instrumental in rallying the siren call for war to seize Canada.
The bid for war in Canada, which mostly centered on the eventual British concession of Quebec to which the war takes its names, was a longstanding desire for the United States. From Britain’s conquest of New France during the Seven Years’ War, to the passage of the Quebec Act which hastened America’s revolutionary fervor over the fear of Catholic expansionism and the expense of Protestantism, to the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, Canada had long been fought over by geopolitical rivals with religious overtures all over the conflict for Canada. This was no different in 1842. Anti-Catholic sentiment was and pro-Protestant expansionism was one of the major factors for the American Revolution, and it was no different in 1775 as it was in 1842. People forget that 10 of the 13 colonies explicitly forbade Catholics from holding office, and Virginia would arrest Catholic clergy if they stepped foot in its borders. As historian Ruth Bloch wrote, "Orations, cartoons, and public hangings of effigies depicted royal ministers as in league alternately with the pope and the devil." Even the Pennsylvania Gazette wrote the passage of the Quebec Act would, "[allow] these dogs of Hell to erect their Heads and triumph within our Borders." Even the much-respected Alexander Hamilton wrote, "Does not your blood run cold to think that an English Parliament should pass an Act for the establishment of arbitrary power and Popery in such an extensive country?…Your loves, your property, your religion are all at stake." America's vision of a Pan-Protestant empire stretching from coast to coast had hardly dissipated, and it was now a driving factor for war.
A painting of Senator Daniel Webster. He was one of the public faces of the Whig Party, along with Henry Clay. He proved to be one of Clay's most erstwhile allies in Congress, both when Clay served in Congress and while serving as President. Daniel Webster was nominated by the Whig Party in 1848 and 1852, losing elections both times, though he died before the completion of the 1852 election. His death did not effect the outcome. He is fondly remembered as a statesman for the Union, and was the third leg of the troika of great American statesmen in the antebellum period, the others being Clay and Calhoun.
Although America had won its independence, Britain was still considered the premier power of the western hemisphere if it so desired. From the time of the “Anglophile” Hamilton to Clay, part of the modernization program in America’s economy was aimed at unleashing the economic potential of the North American continent to overthrow the British and Spanish (later Mexican) rule. Furthermore, to stem the westward movement of American expansionism, a northern war would—in Clay and Webster’s mind—direct the flow of migration northward. Catholic Quebec would be overrun by Protestant settlers and pioneers seeking their fortune. Not to mention Upper and Lower Canada were resource rich, territories ripe for utilizing in the new Whig economic system that Clay was constructing, mixed with the militant spirit of American Calvinist Protestantism.
In Quebec, the Protestant minority that had built itself up since the British conquest were still clamoring for increased rights and power as in the rest of Canada. The Quebec Act, which was really one of the major causes of the American Revolution, was feared in the colonies because it extended Quebec’s territorial to the Upper Midwest. Furthermore, by guaranteeing the free expression of Catholic religiosity and withdrawing Protestantism as a requirement for political office. The Declaration of Independence even referenced the Quebec Act as one of the many grievances of the Americans. The failure to seize Quebec in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 had always been an embarrassment—especially to Henry Clay, one of the leading war hawks of 1812.
After the failure of the Lower Canada Rebellion, disgruntled English working-class laborers and farmers took out their frustration at Roman Catholics in Quebec who were considered traitors to the cause—even though many Catholics were part of the rebellion for republican government and self-rule against British rule. In America, the Protestant agitating had an open audience. We see, then, in the United States the early seeds of a Pan-Protestant nationalism. This, however, was not unique to America but an inheritance from the English Reformation.
An American "Know Nothing" flag warning Protestant ("Native") Americans of the dangerous influence of Catholic ("Foreign") influence. It is accurate to describe the American Party as an anti-immigrant movement, but this is equally misleading. It was really an anti-religious movement, fearful of Catholic immigrants. Protestants of Anglo-Saxon stock were accepted. The conflict between American Protestantism and Catholicism goes back to the Puritans, who envisioned a North American New Jerusalem, a bastion of liberty and Protestantism for all. Catholics need not be welcomed unless they convert. The American Party movement was the first movement to draw upon the shared Protestant heritage of the United States. All Protestant Americans were free to join the movement, Congregationalist, Methodist, Baptist. The movement had a secret order: The Order of the Star Spangled Banner. Many Whigs were secret members.
During the English Glorious Revolution, in what was by every standard an act of treason, English Protestant dissenters invited the Dutch Protestant stadtholder William to take the Crown. William brought an army of Dutch, English, Scotch-Irish, French, Danes, and Germans of Protestant religiosity to overthrow James II. Likewise, during the Spanish War of Succession, English Pan-Protestantism was a driving factor in English foreign policy thought. The Earl of Galway was, after all, a French Protestant who served for the English because of England’s Pan-Protestant ideology. Even the traditional song “Over the Hills and Far Away” engender this Pan-Protestant spirit with a reference to the French Huguenot turned English commander:
No more from sound of drum retreat
When Marlborough and Galway beat
The French and Spaniards every day
Over the hills and far away.
Even popular patriotic songs, like “Rule Britannia,” had anti-Catholic lyrics that pass the modern audience. The line “Britons, ne’er will be slaves” refers not to economic slavery or the institution of slavery, but the slavery of Catholicism and of absolutist Catholic monarchy against the rectitude of Constitutional Protestant liberty. This long tradition of English anti-Catholicism was nothing new in America; in fact, it was probably heightened in the United States which has been the most anti-Catholic country in world history.
This anti-Catholicism and Pan-Protestantism was transmitted to the United States. Protestants everywhere ought to be united against Catholic oppression. This reappeared in the Quebec War. For Clay, it was a trifecta he could not pass up. The press was equally calling for the war to protect “our Protestant brethren.” America’s Pan-Protestant nationalism was dangerously mixed with republican democracy—unlike Britain’s monarchy—and was decentralized unlike the Church of England. Second, the war was seen as a means to halt westward expansion for the time being. And lastly, the envisioned victory would open the rich resources fields of British Canada to the United States and would fund the American System of Clay. As Clay privately opined to Webster before the Declaration of War, “Our conquest of Canada will return itself ten-fold.”
The irony of American politics is that the Democrats, although anti-Catholic, were often less so than the Whigs. The Whig Party was violently, and I do mean violently, anti-Catholic. With its upperclass Protestant and nativist base, the Whig Party’s own name reflects the “Country Whig” ideology that was sweeping colonial America during the time of the Revolution in 1775. The Country Whig ideology was deeply republican, but also anti-clerical and the most anti-Catholic of all political ideologies in early America with its roots in the teachings of Cromwell. The choice of the Whig Party to name itself after this movement was not just a homage to the Patriot republicans of the American Revolution, it also signified the Whig Party’s Protestant nationalism, albeit of a different stripe than that of the Democratic Party’s Presbyterianism.
Even Maryland, which had a large Catholic population, was only 10% Catholic at in 1790. Only 25 recorded priests served in the United States at the time. And only 2% of America was Catholic by 1800. The Catholic populations began only to swell in numbers in the 1840s and 1850s, but even that swelling could be misleading. It was never as if Catholics ever threatened to ever overturn the majority Protestant population.
A Massachusetts newspaper proclaiming a defense of proper American (Protestant) values and beliefs. Note the dramatic religious imagery at the center of the newspaper. While it is true that American "Know Nothingism" was widespread, and found a large bastion of support in areas with small Catholic populations, the vast majority of American Party success came in New England. American historian John Higham said anti-Catholicism was "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history." Another American historian, Peter Viereck, said "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals." That said, the movement was ardently republican and democratic. Though this was not extended to peoples of a religion they deemed anti-republican and anti-democratic. States like Massaschusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and later California (when John C. Fremont changed parties) were the states that saw the most success for the party. In 1854, the American Party swept Massachusetts. Robert Conrad, the Whig Mayor of Philadelphia, was also a Know Nothing. Know Nothing mayors won in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Washington D.C. In Congress, its leaders came from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Know Nothings came to dominate the State Chambers of Massachusetts and Maine for a short period. They also had a strong minority presence in the state legislatures of Pennsylvania and New York. In Maine, Catholic priests were routinely tarred and feathered.
A typical anti-Catholic cartoon of the period. In fitting fashion, the young child in the image holds a book to the oncoming Catholic bishop. "The Holy Bible." The implication that Catholics were not real Christians was a common facet of American Protestantism well into the 20th century. American historian Arthur Schlesinger said of anti-Catholicism in American culture and politics, "The deepest bias in the history of the American people."
In August of 1842, when the declaration of war was finalized, and American troops marched off to war—the irony of the conflict was that Protestant America was fighting Protestant Britain. But in the minds of American soldiers, it was a war against Catholicism. Soldiers joyfully sung, “War with none but Hell and Rome”[1] as they crossed the border into Canada. Many Protestant clergy even wrote that Britain had been infected by the Jesuits and Papists, and their goal was to dismantle the Protestant republic of the United States so as to conquer North America.[2] The Quebec Act and the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 were cited as evidence for the Catholic infiltration of the British Crown. This fear extended to Episcopalians, who were derided essentially zombie Catholics, blind to the fact that Anglicanism had been overrun by closet Jesuits. (This explains the anti-Catholic claims against John C. Fremont, a devout Reformed Episcopalian.)
The issue of anti-Catholicism in the Whig Party, and America more generally, represents the uniqueness of American Protestantism that Alexis de Tocqueville noted during his journey through the American States. Although England and Britain was equally sharply anti-Catholic up through the Victorian Era, British anti-Catholicism was tamed by the pragmatism of global empire. Catholics lived in the empire and served the empire. Hence, the anti-Catholicism of the English Reformation slowly eroded leading to Catholic emancipation in the 1820s. This did not end the culture of anti-Catholicism, but did bring about the end of legal and political discrimination. Furthermore, the established Church of England—although nominally Calvinist in its Westminster Confession—had a higher ecclesiology and liturgy compared to the dissenting Protestant traditions which served as the backbone of the Anglo-American liberalism.[3] That high ecclesiology and liturgy was somewhat similar to Catholicism’s ecclesiology and liturgy.
In the United States, the great “exception” was that American Protestantism, almost ubiquitously (except with American Anglicanism—Episcopalianism), was low church Calvinist: the Puritans and their sister outgrowths of Congregationalism and Unitarianism, Presbyterianism, Calvinist-Baptist oriented congregationalism, and the Dutch Reformed Church. Calvinism was also the prevailing theology of America’s Episcopal Church. Only the Methodist Church and the Methodist influenced free Baptist Churches were Arminian and broke with America’s prevailing Calvinist spirit. The lack of high church liturgy and ecclesiology meant America’s Protestant culture had nothing remotely similar to Catholicism as in England. Furthermore, the general lack of Catholic populations in the United States prevented any rise of pragmatism among America’s Protestant elite as it did in England, leading to the Quebec Act and Catholic emancipation in a 50 year span. Even the “Separation of Church of State” was really a Protestant creation that had anti-Catholic goals and that “religious liberty” was equally an anti-Catholic Protestant novelty.[4] It had nothing to do with “liberty” and “toleration” as most people think.
The irony of anti-Manifest Destiny politics is that it was also anti-Catholic in many manners. With the new arrival of Catholic immigrant populations beginning in the late 1820s, but reaching new heights by the 1840s, the unsettled West was seen as Protestant land that the Revolution and Louisiana Purchase had been fought to win. Catholics, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, were feared that they would move westward and take the lands first if they were not stopped. Plus, Catholics would work the factories since they had no established jobs as America’s Protestant caste had. The “No Irish Need Apply” phenomenon was more for middle-class shops and stores, not the large factories and textile mills that required mass employment. The American Revolution, Louisiana Purchase, and annexation of Texas were not undertaken to allow Catholics to freely move west.
To War with None But Hell and Rome, and the British?
As stated, the irony of Clay’s Quebec War was that it was envisioned as a rebuff against westward expansion, but ended up facilitating it. The Ontario and Quebec Campaigns went smoothly. Michael Banks’ victory marked a decisive victory in the east. However, British forces put up a fierce defense of the west. The British victory at the Battle of Winnipeg led to a British invasion of the American Upper Midwest: the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. British soldiers even crossed Lake Michigan before being turned back by William Clayton, who launched a dazzling six month campaign that sapped British momentum and ultimately brought forth the conclusion of the war. Additionally, British soldiers laid siege to Fort Seattle in Washington, but were defeated, marking the beginning of a long and protected campaign of attrition along the Pacific coast and mountains.
The Battle of Trois Rivieres, the first major battle of the war. And the only major encounter in Quebec Campaign. The decisive American victory brought quick control of Eastern Canada under American control. The rest of the war was fought in Western Canada and America, and the American Midwest.
The Battle of Winnipeg, the worst American defeat of the war. Initially, the western campaigns got off to a good start. British forces were turned back at Fort Seattle, and American forces began pushing into the westerly Canadian territories. At Winnipeg, the British mounted stiff resistance and scored a decisive victory against the invading American Army of the Midwest. General John Sullivan was forced to retreat back to the American Midwest. For much of the spring and summer of 1843, British forces raided the Upper American Midwest. Sullivan was not in a position to stop the British. He was relieved of command and the army folded into the newly assembled Army of Ohio under the command of William Clayton. Clayton defeated the British invasion of Michigan and pushed the retreating British back into central Canada.
Although Montreal and Quebec City were in American hands, and American soldiers were soon to occupy the Canadian Parliament Building, the fighting out west was an embarrassment for the American war effort. Midwest volunteers were mobilized to repel the British invaders. This was eventually accomplished by March of 1844, but the reality was the war that was meant to push northward expansionism and a fight against Catholic oppression of Quebec’s Protestant minority ended up being a war over the Upper northwest. American soldiers forcibly seized control of these territories. The tens of thousands of Americans who lost their homes in the British retaliation into the Upper Midwest flocked further westward, especially toward the Washington Territory, when soldiers returned and told tales of the land’s beauty and natural preserves.
The destruction of lands also led Clay to push funds to the Upper Midwest for its reconstruction. Although this ironically made the Great Lakes region suitable for rapid industrialization in a way that it was not previously ideally suited with a lack of infrastructure, the reality remains that the war for Quebec was mostly fought in the American Midwest, Washington Territory, and central Canada and not Upper and Lower Canada as expected. Yet, by war’s end, the British conceded Lower Canada (Quebec) to the Americans. The Protestant minority was supposedly ecstatic. The Quebec Act was revoked. The Provisional Quebecois Territorial government became dominated by Quebec’s Protestant minority which rigidly enforced and created barriers to prevent Catholic social mobility and favored the Protestant minority. The American Quebec garrison served as an ever present reminder of American power in North America.
The defeat of the British was not a major blow to the British imperial empire. Nor was a critical blow to the future nation of Canada. When Canada became independent, the Americans welcomed the new English republic into the fellowship of nations. Canada and America organized a primitive free trade bloc insofar that Canada was granted free access to American roads and canals to reach Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to have acquire its traded goods from the Atlantic Ocean. But the defeat of the British in the Quebec War, followed by the American victory in the Second Mexican War, in a single decade transformed the North American Continent.
British power in the western Hemisphere was curtailed. Mexico was cut down by 50%. America expanded greatly. The United States became the undisputed land power in North America, and was now ready to become an industrial and economic powerhouse by the early 20th century that would surpass both Britain and Germany. But one of the biggest ironies of the Quebec War is that opened the west for more expansion than even Polk and the Democrats could have dreamed. Through the war, America won the upper northwest. And there was nothing Clay and the Whigs could do to prevent those who lost everything in the Midwest from flocking to the Oregon and Washington Territory after the war to seek their new beginnings. Furthermore, America was finally out of the shadow of the British Empire in North America.
The Battle of Chicoutimi. Under the command of William Clayton, the combined armies of Ohio and the Midwest repelled the British invasion of the American Midwest. The British army was shattered at the battle of Grand Rapids which precipitated the collapse of meaningful British resistance. Clayton pushed into Canada, encountering the last major pocket of British and Canadian troops at Chicoutimi. The decisive victory marked the end of major action between both sides. In the Peace of Ottawa, Quebec was ceded to the United States.
*For my game's purposes.
[1] This is was a common saying in American Protestant culture up through the early 1900s.
[2] This is a common anti-Catholic trope throughout American history. In this rendering, it has been re-contextualized to reflect my war with Britain for Canada.
[3] The Protestant origin and character of liberalism is widely attested to in historical and philosophical scholarship. As Bertrand Russell explains, “Early liberalism was a product of England and Holland…it was Protestant.” Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, p. 597.
Many scholars of religion, sociologists, historians, and philosophers consider “secularization” as nothing but the internalization of Protestant ideas and principles, to which “secularism” is the next stage of Protestantism in its self-consummation (and ironically, departure from classical Christianity, e.g. Catholicism and Eastern & Oriental Orthodoxy). The Separation of Church and State was a Protestant idea. Freedom of conscious was originally understood to allow the Protestant to follow freely his reading of the Biblical text. The energies of science and commerce have long been noted as the product of the “Protestant Work Ethic.” Republicanism (modern form) is equally a novelty of Protestant thought. Anti-clericalism originally was a Protestant idea aimed at Catholic clericalism. Today’s secular attitudes are just the next evolutionary stage of Protestant thought in this Hegelian reading. One of the finest works of scholarship tracking the evolution (secularization) of America’s founding Protestant ideals into modern progressivism is Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America. One can also read David P. Goldman, “The Rise of Secular Religion,” The American Interest, his review and synopsis of Bottum’s work. See also, the works of the late Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons on the matter.
[4] See Philip Hamburger, “Separation of Church and State: A Theologically Liberal, anti-Catholic, and American Principle,” University of Chicago Law School, 43 Nov. 2002, 1-53. Also Nicholas Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment and Donald Drakeman, Church, State, and Original Intent.
RECOMMEND READING
Pasi Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of English, Dutch, and Swedish Public Churches
Victor Coffin, The Quebec Act and the American Revolution
SUGGESTED READING
Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age
Charles Coulombe, Puritan's Empire
Donald Drakeman, Church, State, and Original Intent
Philip Hamburger, “Separation of Church and State: A Theologically Liberal, anti-Catholic, and American Principle,” University of Chicago Law School, 43 Nov. 2002, 1-53. See his expanded book from his essay, Separation of Church and State
Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party
Glenn A Moots, “The Protestant Roots of American Civil Religion,” Humanitas 23, nos. 1-2, pp. 78-106, 2010.
Nicholas Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State
Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America
Pasi Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined: Changing Perceptions of National Identity in the Rhetoric of English, Dutch, and Swedish Public Churches
Victor Coffin, The Quebec Act and the American Revolution
SUGGESTED READING
Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age
Charles Coulombe, Puritan's Empire
Donald Drakeman, Church, State, and Original Intent
Philip Hamburger, “Separation of Church and State: A Theologically Liberal, anti-Catholic, and American Principle,” University of Chicago Law School, 43 Nov. 2002, 1-53. See his expanded book from his essay, Separation of Church and State
Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party
Glenn A Moots, “The Protestant Roots of American Civil Religion,” Humanitas 23, nos. 1-2, pp. 78-106, 2010.
Nicholas Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State
Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America
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I shudder to think at what it must be like to be a Quebecois at this time, suddenly placed under the rule of a virulently anti-Catholic regime like the one described. I have this feeling that in this timeline, Quebec may well become America's Ireland.
"new English republic" - I hope this isn't foreshadowing of the worst kind of government becoming the new government type in the UK.
Great chapter though.
Great chapter though.
Keep your head down and your rosary hidden...
Yes. The encoded files are all wrong for American politics since Victoria separates incorrectly with regard to American politics.
"new English republic" - I hope this isn't foreshadowing of the worst kind of government becoming the new government type in the UK.
Great chapter though.
Thanks. You have no worry about that. Looking back, I see the ambiguity. By "English republic" I meant Canada, e.g. the Canadians are almost all English now since I have control of Quebec. Fellowship of the Anglosphere.
Haha. Thanks for pointing that out. That's a major typo that spell-check doesn't catch for me since it's a real word.
That was supposed to be "attrition."
It's now rectified.- 1
Since you mention "Over the Hills and Far Away", here's a link to a fine performance.
I do love Percy Grainger...
I do love Percy Grainger...
There's just something about the musical tradition and culture that Grainger became an unapologetic defender and promoter of that's just truly wonderful. It really captures the serenity that the Sturm und Drang tradition, equally wonderful in its own, just failed to capture (and let's be honest, that would have defeated the point of the very movement itself).
Do you mind saying what party template you used? I'm looking to edit my own according to historical precepts.
Republican Party:
economic_policy = interventionism
trade_policy = protectionism
religious_policy = moralism
citizenship_policy = limited_citizenship
war_policy = pro_military
Democratic Party:
economic_policy = interventionism
trade_policy = free_trade
religious_policy = pluralism
citizenship_policy = limited_citizenship
war_policy = jingoism
Whig Party:
economic_policy = interventionism
trade_policy = protectionism
religious_policy = moralism
citizenship_policy = limited_citizenship
war_policy = pro_military
If you add/change for an American Party:
economic_policy = state capitalism
trade_policy = protectionism
religious_policy = moralism
citizenship_policy = residency
war_policy = pro_military
I can't quite remember what the originals were. Editing the party coded files is what I always do for the U.S. in Victoria. Not to add that technically the Democratic Party shouldn't be listed as a "conservative" party either. I'm also really upset that I have to choose pluralism for religious policy for the Dems cause that's a bit misleading. It's not as if the nineteenth century Democratic Party really had a strong care for Catholics, they were more or less voting tools to break Whig and Republican political hegemony in the north. The idea that the Republicans and Whigs should be laissez-faire and free trade is just silly as they're originally encoded. And both parties were deeply influenced by Protestant moralism and nativism too.
economic_policy = interventionism
trade_policy = protectionism
religious_policy = moralism
citizenship_policy = limited_citizenship
war_policy = pro_military
Democratic Party:
economic_policy = interventionism
trade_policy = free_trade
religious_policy = pluralism
citizenship_policy = limited_citizenship
war_policy = jingoism
Whig Party:
economic_policy = interventionism
trade_policy = protectionism
religious_policy = moralism
citizenship_policy = limited_citizenship
war_policy = pro_military
If you add/change for an American Party:
economic_policy = state capitalism
trade_policy = protectionism
religious_policy = moralism
citizenship_policy = residency
war_policy = pro_military
I can't quite remember what the originals were. Editing the party coded files is what I always do for the U.S. in Victoria. Not to add that technically the Democratic Party shouldn't be listed as a "conservative" party either. I'm also really upset that I have to choose pluralism for religious policy for the Dems cause that's a bit misleading. It's not as if the nineteenth century Democratic Party really had a strong care for Catholics, they were more or less voting tools to break Whig and Republican political hegemony in the north. The idea that the Republicans and Whigs should be laissez-faire and free trade is just silly as they're originally encoded. And both parties were deeply influenced by Protestant moralism and nativism too.
CHAPTER IV: MANIFEST DESTINY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
America’s Triumvirate: Clay, Calhoun, Webster and the Politics of Unionism at Bay
America’s Triumvirate: Clay, Calhoun, Webster and the Politics of Unionism at Bay
The Quebec War highlighted Clay, Webster, and the Whig Party for what they truly were: liberal expansionists in much the same manner as the Jefferson-Jackson “Manifest Destiny” wing of the Democratic Party. As mentioned, when Polk launched the Second Mexican War, it was in a bid to expand freedom and liberty as understood in the philosophies of the State of Nature: Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, and Rousseau; Polk’s own writings indicate he had little interest in expanding slave-holding interests westward. In fact, the one school of opposition to true westward expansion—ironically emanates from a realist wing of the pro-slavery power politics of the Democratic Party. This is not to say that slavery did not have an expansionist wing. It most certainly did, and that wing helped propel sectional tension.
Clay and Webster, for instance, were definitely expansionist liberals. As were the Manifest Destiny Democrats. Anti-slavery, and pro-slavery interests, in were American expansionists. This only complicates the matter to how to understand the role of Manifest Destiny in the American psyche in the nineteenth century. Hitherto mentioned, westward expansion was envisioned by all expansionist parties. The timetable of expansion differed. Also, the Whigs, in seeking a war for Quebec in the north, had shown their true colors. It was this problem, “where liberty is, America is,” as Clay said as he asked for a declaration of war, that ultimately cost Clay and the Whigs the Congress and presidency in 1844. Never to regain either branch again. Their opposition to Polk’s expansionist program rang hallow—and why wouldn’t it?
The Quebec War had brought forth the annexation of a province of British Canada. The war itself was predominately fought in the Upper Midwest and the American Northwest. The Battles of Fort Seattle, Fort Madison (Wisconsin), and Grand Rapids, though American victories, only encouraged westward settlement in the rebuilding era. With America’s victory over Mexico just a few years later, the entire west was opened to American settlers and pioneers.
This vision of an expansionist empire of liberty takes its name from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson envisioning a buttress against British interests in North America, “we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.” Jefferson’s anti-British attitudes certainly influenced his support for the French Revolution. He, of course, wrote of this Empire of liberty again envisioning the conquest of Canada in the years leading up to the War of 1812. A war Clay had passionately supported in his more youthful days.
Webster, for his part, was among the Cotton Whigs of the north. He understood the economic dependency of New England textiles to American cotton. The Whig program of protectionism was a means to keep the flow of American cotton to the New England states to build up the domestic industrial base. It also served the double interest of halting the flow of cotton to the British textiles mills, which perpetuated the British Colonial Trading system as covered chapter one.
America's "Triumvirate": Senators Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun.
Webster was a strong unionist. The would play out in the Compromise of 1850. But it would be wrong to see him as a sort of moral paladin. The moralism of the north was breaking down between the lower-class Puritan "laity" who were increasingly becoming agitated over the issue of slavery as being incompatible with Christian thought, and the wealthy scions of the Puritans, whom in their business acumen and position in society believed slavery helped the American economy. Though the Whigs were generally unified in a tepid anti-slavery expansionism, they were nevertheless American expansionists. America needed more territory and resources to support the American System. To this, Webster was Clay’s strongest and most loyal ally and friend. Whether president, or together in the Congress.
The matter of Unionism vs liberal expansionism was a quintessential and defining question of antebellum America. It has its roots as far back as the Cavalier-Puritan split in America’s founding, and equally found in the break-off faction of Jeffersonians—the Tertium Quids, who advocated anti-expansionism in order to maintain the Union. The matter was easy to understand among the Quids. Expansionism would bring to fore the inherent tensions within American culture and constitutional governance. The end result would be disaster. For his part, John Adams can rightly regarded as America’s only conservative statesman. His constant anti-expansionism—which brought him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton—limited faith in progress, and Unionism reflected a realism from him that was unrivaled. By contrast, his long-time friend Thomas Jefferson equally understood such tensions, but accommodated his liberal expansionism with anti-slavery politics. It was Jefferson’s view that westward expansion could maintain the Union only if slavery was not expanded. To this end, as I’ve said earlier, he was the most anti-slavery president in the early republic. He banned slavery’s potential expansion in the Northwest Territories through the Northwest Ordinances. Made clear his view that the Louisiana Territory should be free from slavery. And outlawed the Slave Trade as President. When the Missouri Compromise was reached, he and Adams both agreed the Union was in peril.
In this sense then, Clay, and Webster were equally in agreement with Jefferson: they were all expansionists, liberals, and Unionists—though with major differences concerning economic policy which is the root of the Democratic-Whig divide of the Second Party System; Adams was alone in this regard being a Unionist and anti-expansionist realist. Calhoun, post-Texas, had ironically become one of the few anti-expansionists in the Congress; though his anti-expansionism was a tacit realism that understood that expansion would only heighten the slavery debate and lead to the only outcome he thought as inevitable: secession. Clay and Webster’s Unionism brought them together in the various “great compromises” that dominated antebellum politics concerning questions of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. The Compromise of 1850 was a perfect example of this moderate Unionism that was hamstrung by expansionism. Expansionism was breaking down the cohesion of Unionism itself.
With the newly won territories of the Second Mexican War, and the constant stream of Americans moving west, settlement had to be reached. As mentioned earlier, David Wilmot had sought to prevent such territories to be annexed as potential slave territories. There was a small contingent then, of anti-slavery Manifest Destiny Democrats. Perhaps we can retroject this philosophy onto Thomas Jefferson. Many thought themselves as faithful Jeffersonians in every way. Agrarian, anti-slavery, and expansionist. They, like Jefferson, believed compromised could keep the Union together.
Daniel Webster, far right, can be seen giving a speech concerning the Compromise of 1850. Like Clay and Calhoun, Webster commanded much respect from the colleagues of not only the Senate Chamber, but also the House of Representatives. He was the Whig Party nominee for President in 1848, losing to Democratic candidate Senator William Rufus King of North Carolina, and also the losing nominee in 1852, dying before the end of the election. As mentioned before, his death did not affect the election outcome.
The Compromise of 1850 altered the Missouri Compromise of 1820. California was also being torn apart by the anti-slavery and pro-slavery Democrats. The anti-slavery Democrats were led by John C. Fremont, a hero of the Second Mexican War. He was instrumental in ensuring California enter the Union as a free state. He was elected to the Senate as an anti-slavery Democrat.
In the halls of Congress, Clay, Calhoun (tacitly objecting), and Webster reached an agreement after extensive debating. California entered as a free state. The New Mexico and Utah territories were permitted to be slave territories. The rest of the west was set aside as free territory. Although a successful compromise, it was to be short-lived. By April of 1860, Southern secessionists fired on American troops and stormed American barracks in New Orleans—starting the Civil War as we all know. Such meandering compromises were never to resolve the true sectional tension of the west. The failure of the Constitution to outlaw slavery was finally coming full stop. Back up north, abolitionist activists like William Lloyd Garrison would publically the burn the Constitution as an evil “slaveholder” document. “No Union with slaveholders” Garrison published at the top of every issue of his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. His run for President in 1856 and 1860 were colorful. He derided the newly formed Republican Party as insufficient. His Abolitionist Party was the only vehicle for a proper abolition who believed in his creed, “No Union with slaveholders” he asserted.[1]
At the same time as the Compromise of 1850 was being debated, pro-slavery expansionists known as the “Fire-Eaters” met in Nashville to discuss the possibility of secession and seizing Caribbean territory if the Congress acted to ban slavery’s expansion in the newly annexed territories of the west. Among the delegates who advocated secession and expansion was young Mississippi Senator and future President, Jefferson Davis. Davis was among the fire-eaters' more radical wing, the wing that advocated outright secession whereas the moderates advocated the Unionist position but maintained it was necessary for slaveholding politics to ensure not just the security of slavery’s continuation, but also bring forth its expansion. He was also a noted “hero” of the Second Mexican War, participating in the push toward Mexico City where he was commended for his command as a colonel.
As Davis said at the time, “President [William] King has rebuffed our every move. He may as well be among the traitorous fellows like Wilmot.” And he had a point. President King had been the Democratic nominee in 1848 when Polk stepped down after his “successful” one term. King was a moderate pro-slavery integralist. He sought slavery’s constitutional integrity, but also fought to maintain the Union. Respected and popular, he had defeated Webster comfortably as the nation reaped the benefits of victorious plunder, and the South had been riled up into a frenzy concerning the Wilmot Proviso.
A photograph of William Rufus King, President of the United States from 1849-1853. Born in North Carolina, he was a long time Senator from Alabama since 1819. There is much rumor as to his relationship with Pennsylvanian Senator and statesman James Buchanan. As President, King ran on a moderate Jacksonian platform calling on the consolidation of the gains won under the Polk Administration. He was a pro-slavery moderate, believing slavery was protected by the Constitution and the Supreme Court, though he was not a "Fire-Eater." His administration came into conflict with the expansionist elements of the Democratic Party, constantly battling the secessionist tendencies of the "fire-eaters." In the 1852 Convention, he stepped down after a relatively uneventful presidency outside of battles over slavery and growing anti-Catholicism, which he seemed inept to stem. The Democrats nominated Mississippi Senator and Fire-Easter Jefferson Davis to replace him. Davis won an incredibly close race against Daniel Webster, who died before the election completed. Of the 300 electoral votes, Davis won 157-143, and also 49.4-48.2 in the popular vote. The South held firm, all but North Carolina voted for Davis. The election demonstrated the growing polarization of slavery. A northerner, Webster won 47%-50% of the vote in states like North Carolina (50.2), Virginia (47.1), Tennessee (48.3), Kentucky (48.2), and Louisiana (48.1). Despite that, he only managed to win North Carolina, thereby costing him the election. Had he won, North Carolina Whig William Alexander Graham would have served as President. The Solid South is a post-Civil War designation. Though the issue of slavery was tending to push the South toward a greater unity than it ever had before, the Whigs had a strong base of support in the American South, performing very well in states like: Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. The party performed well in other states like Louisiana and Virginia, though won only upon occasion. After the Civil War, animosity over the Civil War and "Northern treachery" unified the Southern Democratic Party. King died six weeks after leaving office, supposedly a "sad and broken man" believing himself having been a failure as President, having served in public office since 1811. Some historians take pity on King all things considered. "No man had ever tried, but failed, to halt the tidal wave of southern secession than King. A fellow Southerner, he knew slave politics well. He genuinely believed the integrity of the Union was the right course of action, and that secession was unconstitutional. But his rejection of allowing slavery's expansion westward cost him dearly, from within his own party, and from his former friends. When he returned home to Alabama, there were no celebrations upon his arrival. He died alone, supposedly weeping in his study next to a dying fire."
Davis and the more radical cabal within the fire-eater camp advocated for expansionism into Cuba and Latin America to maintain slavery’s equal power disposition in the Union. To this, King was vocally opposed and worked tirelessly with Clay, Webster, and Calhoun to ensure this wasn’t the case. Calhoun, for his part, was formerly a fire-eater turned integralist and believed it was in the best interest of the South, to remain in the Union, but the Union had to honor its compact with the South concerning slavery otherwise Calhoun saw the south as inevitably seceding. Something he considered to be a tragic inevitability. As he noted in his speech read by friend and fellow Senator James Mason, slavery and whether or not the southern states would be pushed into secession rested entirely on the actions of the American north.
The Nashville Convention would later inspire the Davis Doctrine of the Davis Administration.[2] Pierre Soulé, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana, an attendee of the convention, would be a driving force as Davis’s Secretary of State. Ironically, Soulé had been exiled from France for being a revolutionary. It is the very revolutionary and progressive nature of the fire-eaters that makes it facile to describe them anything other than revolutionary.
Nevertheless, the breakdown of the slave politics is also misleading. As mentioned, from the Quid Republicans and Jefferson, there had always existed a tension between anti-expansionist and anti-slavery Democrats (Quids) and pro-expansionist and anti-slavery Democrats (Jeffersonians) with the more militantly expansionist fire-eaters. All were slavery integralists, but wildly had different views on whether slavery ought to expand. The heightened tension between integralists and expansionists, then, was nothing new. But with the rapid expansion through the Polk Administration from the Mississippi to California, the issue was no longer avoidable. Not only was it tearing the Democratic Party into bitter factions, it was equally an issue the Whigs could no longer avoid.
The Whigs had long sidelined slavery. It gave the north economic benefits after all. It was the cornerstone to the “Cotton Whigs” pro-Americanist economic policies. Not to mention it harmed the British Empire to have a cheap flow of cotton and other southern goods to the north rather than large expenditures outflowing to Europe. And it is wrong to think the Democrats dominated southern politics. While Democrats were the majority in the Deep South, Whigs were prominent in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, and even the coastal areas of South Carolina. Many of these Whigs were Cotton Whigs in the south. Many of them were old landed gentry too.
Senator and former President Henry Clay speaking before the Senate in the final days before the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise of 1850, while preserving the Union temporarily, permanently damaged the Whig Party. The issue of slavery could not continue to be sidelined as it was by the national party and its luminaries. The party's collapse was brought forth by many factors, slavery one of them. The anti-Catholic and social reformist spirit of the Whig Party was captured by the American Party. The anti-slavery and abolitionist wings helped to form the Republican Party.
The American Party’s rise was also cutting away at Whig support. The Whig Party’s anti-Catholic stances were alienating more moderate members like Abraham Lincoln. As mentioned, many Whigs were secret members of the Order of the Star Spangled Banner. The Whigs were hardly benign pro-immigration advocates as sometimes erroneously taught. The most vile of American Protestant nativism emanated from the Whig Party in the 1840s and 1850s. Daniel Webster, for instance, played to nativist themes in Massachusetts, a hub of progressive nativist sentiment.[3] Also, the Whig Party has routinely been described as “demonstrating their anti-immigrant pedigree to mollify the nativists.” As such, the Democrats in the north, not necessarily pro-Catholic by any means, used the issue to their advantage by becoming a party that Catholics could look to for protection, and also economic help against the Protestant protectionists. Catholics, mostly arriving in places like Pennsylvania and New York, could be useful voting assets to breaking Whig Party power in the north. After all, in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, Whig Party rallies regularly emphasized the themes of a Catholic invasion of the United States that Democrats supposedly welcomed. So it's unsurprising that the rise of the American Party ate away at Whig support. Protestant nativists were always the main base of the Whig Party. This simply drove Catholics into the arm of the only party that was available for them to associate with. But this too was equally withering away at moderate Unionism and compromise on slavery. The Whigs, simply, were spent. The party had failed, and otherwise exhausted itself at large by the 1850s.
But Expansionist Unionism was very much the consensus of American politics. From the Democrats and the Whigs. But it was undergoing significant pressure from all sides. The Free Soil Party was folding into the Abolitionist Party of William Lloyd Garrison which made abolitionism front and center. The American Party had arisen from middle-class and lower-class Protestant strongholds and were vehemently anti-Catholic and pro-republic (Protestant republicanism that is); the Whig Party had long been encouraging such nativism throughout its existence too. The fire-eaters were agitating for possible secession, or the elimination of the Compromise of 1850 and beginning to use the doctrine of “popular sovereignty” as a democratic wedge issue to expand slavery northward. For their part, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster were stuck in the mire. American politics had left them all behind. Left behind, they stuck with the status-quo. In the end, it bought the Union one more decade of life. But that extra decade of life was crucial in the end. The irony of their record then is this. All three contributed to the collapse of the Union. Yet all three equally ensured that the Union would prevail in the end. Civil War in 1850s would have certainly benefited the south as the north was embroiled in its own threefold civil war between economic nationalists who wanted to ignore slavery, anti-slavery and abolitionist forces who were insisting that slavery was the political issue of their time that had to be tackled, and anti-Catholic Protestant nativism. The south, meanwhile, was mobilizing its resolve on the single issue of slavery. The ten years purchased in favor of the Union by Clay, Calhoun, and Webster allowed the north to slowly mobilize its resolve on the same issue. And not a month too soon when secessionists seized New Orleans in April of 1860.
[1] Fictional. Garrison never founded or ran on such a party. He does in my writing of this AAR though.
[2] Equivalent to the Ostend Manifesto.
[3] Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, p. 228.
RECOMMEND READING
Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
SUGGESTED READING
A.O. Aldridge, “John Adams: Pioneer American Conservative”
Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party
Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy
Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World
Walter McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy and Promised Land, Crusader State
Peter Viereck, Conservative Thinkers: From John Adams to Winston Churchill
Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century
SUGGESTED READING
A.O. Aldridge, “John Adams: Pioneer American Conservative”
Michael Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party
Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy
Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World
Walter McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy and Promised Land, Crusader State
Peter Viereck, Conservative Thinkers: From John Adams to Winston Churchill
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Splendid, absolutely splendid. Just 2 questions I wish to ask, 1 : what exactly is the meaning of Arminian? I looked around on the internet but I still don't get it. 2: Later on in this TL, will you be doing a post on immigration,?Given that in OTL USA, there was few immigration from Russian, Belarusians and Ukrainians and in Vic 2 there remains no such barriers to such emigration.
My, my. Rufus King and Jeff Davis, too - quite a selection of presidents. If Buchanan's Secretary of War (the execrable John Floyd) got away with transferring arms to Southern arsenals, what effect will an ardent, fire-eating secessionist like your Davis have?
Rufus King figures in one of my favorite 'what if' scenarios. Pierce and his family were involved in a train wreck before the inauguration and their son was killed. Pierce's wife blamed him and he retreated into depression and alcohol. Rufus King, his Vice-President, had to be sworn in from Cuba because of illness and died soon after, leaving the vice-presidency vacant as there was at that time no provision for filling the office other than the regular election.
So. If Pierce had died (as he did soon after leaving office), with no vice-president in place the rules of that time devolved the office on the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Several men held that post during the Pierce administration but one had it for quite a lot of the time and is therefore most likely to have become President: Senator Jesse Bright of Indiana.
That's the same Jesse Bright who was outspokenly pro-Southern, who was often heard to say that the South should be allowed to go in peace, and who was thrown out of the Senate for his sympathies (including referring to Jeff Davis as President of the CSA).
It's a chain of what-ifs, I know. But if Bright became President during the Pierce administration he might well have run for re-election in 1856, putting a very pro-Southern Democratic President in charge rather than the indecisive and moderate Buchanan. Lincoln (assuming history moves to something like our own track) could come into office with the CSA already granted recognition by Bright, with the forts and federal property given over and foreign recognition an established fact.
Franklin Pierce was a desperately depressed man seeking peace in alcohol. Not a great president. But at least he didn't die on us!
Rufus King figures in one of my favorite 'what if' scenarios. Pierce and his family were involved in a train wreck before the inauguration and their son was killed. Pierce's wife blamed him and he retreated into depression and alcohol. Rufus King, his Vice-President, had to be sworn in from Cuba because of illness and died soon after, leaving the vice-presidency vacant as there was at that time no provision for filling the office other than the regular election.
So. If Pierce had died (as he did soon after leaving office), with no vice-president in place the rules of that time devolved the office on the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Several men held that post during the Pierce administration but one had it for quite a lot of the time and is therefore most likely to have become President: Senator Jesse Bright of Indiana.
That's the same Jesse Bright who was outspokenly pro-Southern, who was often heard to say that the South should be allowed to go in peace, and who was thrown out of the Senate for his sympathies (including referring to Jeff Davis as President of the CSA).
It's a chain of what-ifs, I know. But if Bright became President during the Pierce administration he might well have run for re-election in 1856, putting a very pro-Southern Democratic President in charge rather than the indecisive and moderate Buchanan. Lincoln (assuming history moves to something like our own track) could come into office with the CSA already granted recognition by Bright, with the forts and federal property given over and foreign recognition an established fact.
Franklin Pierce was a desperately depressed man seeking peace in alcohol. Not a great president. But at least he didn't die on us!
Arminian is a theological term, named after Jacob Arminius. There were some famous debates in Calvinism, specifically Holland, concerning issues of free will and predestination. Arminius, in the short story, broke with some of prevailing "orthodox" Calvinist positions of the day. Depending on who you read and ask, the Arminians are either a unique subset within the Reformed tradition, or they're entirely unique altogether starting their own tradition. Arminius defended free will and non-predestination soteriology against the limited atonement and theological determinism of Calvinist doctrine. Here in America, most of the Protestant denominations--coming out of the non-conformist (mostly Calvinist) tradition--are rooted in historical Calvinism. The Methodists and Free Baptist Churches are the exception.
It makes understanding the "Evangelical" movement here in the states very odd, since they're historically delineated out of generally Reformed Calvinist traditions, but basically are Arminian when it comes to grace, free will, and soteriology--except for the neo-Calvinists. But we don't need a lesson on the theologies of American Protestantisms, or at least not yet... (Most American Protestants are probably loosely Arminian today, even churches from the old Calvinist traditions like the UCC, PCUSA, and the Reformed Church in America aren't really Calvinist anymore, although technically they are in doctrinal and confessional commitments; their practical theologies were all transformed with the Social Gospel movement which we'll get to when that time comes.) If you're not Dutch you're not much!
Flows of immigration are following historical patterns in-game. Though we'll touch on some eastern European immigration later.
I like to spice things up.
I kind of feel bad for Pierce, all things considered. Like Polk, he supposedly had read Hegel. Anyone who reads Hegel in America is man after my own heart!
I suppose I shouldn't really give much away about Jeff Davis since we'll be seeing some of the things going on when he's president, and we'll visit a certain "grey-eyed man of destiny" too and a possible new relationship with the American government with Davis at the helm.
@volksmarschall summarizes the "what" pretty well, but I think it's important to say a few words about they "why" as well for a better understanding.
Traditional Calvinism asserts that after the Fall of Adam, mankind's nature was corrupted utterly into a state of "total depravity" -- basically, not only are we unable to save ourselves through our own works, but we're also unable to even recognize the true extent of our fallen state so that even our "good intentions" are corrupted by a sort of moral shortsightedness, without the divine intervention of God's grace. It also asserts that when God sacrificed Christ on the Cross, He did so only for those who were preordained by God to receive His grace without regard for any sort of intrinsic will or merit, and that when this grace acts on a human soul, it is utterly irresistible -- because even the elect are unable to choose salvation of their own free will before they are regenerated, God uses His sovereign power to regenerate them so that they can accept it.
Jacob Arminius and his followers, while not denying total depravity as such, asserted that the rest of the Calvinist position has some unsettling implications: Not only does it deny human beings the capacity for true moral agency, but it also implies that God created a certain class of people that He was going to arbitrarily damn to Hell anyway. The Arminians instead believe that the salvation offered through Christ's sacrifice was a general atonement open to all humanity, not merely the elect; that rather than "irresistible grace," God operates through "prevenient grace" that allows the unregenerate to genuinely recognize their fallen state and accept the offer of atonement of their own free choice; and that the elect who will be saved are preordained neither arbitrarily nor on the basis of any special merit, but rather through God's foreknowledge of how each soul will respond to His offer.
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Divine Fury! I knew you'd comment!
Of course, it won't be long until we see the widespread Arminianization of the Protestant Mainline's "practical theology," if we can really call the Social Gospel a process of Arminianization!
(That's what most historians say, so I'm bound to it in some fashion, though not without misgivings, it was nothing more than a more benign iteration of Calvinist quasi-perfectionism coming out of the Puritan tradition. We'll have a whole chapter on this I think when I get to the Progressive Era!)
No Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With the World Since 1776 by Walter McDougall? I've always thought McDougall was spot on regarding foreign affairs of the United States in the 19th century.
You must have missed it. No "Suggestion" List would be complete without him.