The emergence of Twitter as a tool of unbridled and unfiltered information and first hand accounts hit home for me this weekend. As the mainstream media tried to keep up and as many of us were trying to figure out what was happening to friends and family and what the real story was, I coped by firing off a lot of "Twitters" as The New York Times likes us to say. I put this together did using Tweetake> A great tool to back up your stuff as it can be turned into useful meta-data, link references and well blackmail if you're so inclined. I said what? And it was RT'd? Shit! People will be looking at there Twitter accounts and Facebook as a diary of what they felt as this weekend unfolded. Also, it will help legal experts and journalists as they sift through the mire of the battlefield to figure out what went wrong, and what went right? So here it is in all its spelling mistake littered, inflammatory and anger induced glory. 

Saturday:

On Anarchy:

This is all made into a distraction. The frustration of the anarchists are a harbinger of the future. they are yes thugs, but also canaries in the proverbial coalmine. If massive world issues over climate, food security, water rights, indigenous rights, health, education and social policy deconstruction are not discussed in a truly inclusive and meaningful way, these guys will turn into an army. it will only get worse. It's sad that in the 21st century there is still a huge swath of have-nots with no voice and the tiny groups of haves who don't care and want to be protected, and THEIR spokespeople are OUR governments now.

Is This Our Government's Fault?:

Yes. it is. The violence is abhorrent but not surprising. There have been other cities that this has happened in that have been handled differently but the lead up to this has been a great big middle finger to civil rights, rights of dissent and freedom of assembly. Know that there is a terrible erosion of core democratic values happening and the viability of our environment and communities are at severe risk. This is born of frustration that has not been diffused by our governments. Security instead of inclusion. A fence instead of a bridge-anarchy happens.

On July 19^th,1848, in 90degree heat, Lucretia Mott stepped up to a podium to give one of her famous speeches. Her talk was peppered with some humour, borrowed from an article written by her sister Martha Wright “why, after an overworked mother completed the myriad daily tasks that were required of her but not of her husband, she was the one upon whom written advice was "so lavishly bestowed.". Mott lent her support and instruction to a document that was a working declaration for what was one of the first recorded women’s rights gatherings. Based on reports from the time it can be presumed that she spoke with authority and purpose and with little fear, never betraying what must have been a tremendous amount of unspoken trepidation about the waters her and the 300 other women in attendance were walking into. What proceeded was a weekend of discussion on totally small subjects such as reforming women’s roles in society, the role of religion, and the abolition of slavery.  What did YOU do last weekend?

 On the afternoon of Saturday the 20^th in the audience a firm and booming mans voice no doubt was heard. He was a black man, and one of the most famous of his time even though the true fruition of his fame and purpose were still more than a decade away.  From the many now historic discussions within Wesleyan Methodist Chapel the most contentious of course was a resolution declaring support for a women’s right to vote. Frederick Douglass now rose with respectful but paternal dignity and argued with eloquence in support of the Declaration of Sentiments. His North Star paper had picked up the announcement of this gathering weeks before and he was a welcome and powerful addition. Douglass had spent the better part of the last two decades running from slave hounds, seeking protection and guidance in England, becoming the most famous orator of the time, creating an abolition newspaper and was a part of the network known as the underground railroad. He was a self-taught, self-made man in an era made famous for the birth of the self-made man but his rise was even more unfathomable as this was a concept thought only achievable by a white man. He was the unintended product of his generation and the perfect confluence of pain, timing, spirit, geography, economics, politics and well, luck. He settled in Rochester and was like the tip of the spear into the heart of slavery and the southern power structure that gripped the nation’s politics. His presence at that moment in time of course says much about the man but speaks volumes about the time and place that these revolutionaries existed in.

 After just a glance at this seminal moment in the mid 19^th century one is immediately struck to dig deeper into how two of the most formative social movements found rich and fertile soil in what was known then as the West, what we now know as upstate New York. These movements were able to spread the roots of protest, which would shake an empire ready to move into a second revolution, industrialization and a first true taste of modernity.

Awake and Dreaming 

The religious freedom and experimentation that was dreamt of since the arrival of the Mayflower became much closer to the reality of life from the early 1800s and on. What is now called the Second Great Awakening was then probably a natural way of things and a coping mechanism for the rapid changes that had taken place after the revolution. The greed, self-interest and lack of communal ideals in the growing republic had many worried that the dreams of their mothers and fathers of yore were being lost to the degradations of the frontier and the decadence of urban growth. Questions about religion’s role in shaping the individual and fundamental concerns of what the rising new national identity of the American would look like made many turn to answers in the revivalism that swept many parts of the South and the frontier North. This religious introspection called for a return to more fundamental concepts found in the New Testament. Communal experiments were tried within and outside of defined religious groups. The impacts on the politics of the time from this were that decisions were being made based on God’s plans, or a “higher law”. Man’s laws were viewed as corrosive and corrupt.  Much of this revivalism had little association with the big old churches of the time and “lay” people in fact founded many, being that in frontier towns the pickin’s for men and women of God were slim. The revivalism in Western New York in particular was so great that in an 1876 study it was deemed by mid-century to have been burned-over. There was no fuel left. The fire of religious and communal ferocity had essentially gone out but not after lighting the fires of many movements.

Education and self-improvement were key to the proliferation of these folks. The bible was so well read people could repeat huge passages and entire readings from memory. Understanding of the concepts embedded in key books and documents like the bible, the Declaration of Independence (this over the constitution-as the Declaration was seen as approximating God’s wishes or a more “natural law” for some as opposed to the man made laws set forth in the constitution). Also widely popular was The Columbian Orator setting forth principles of patriotism one was to follow. As well, the work of Byron was widely read and a major influence of key actors of the time. People were encouraged to read. There was a manner of acceptance about bringing one to a higher conception of self and seeing an individual’s role as apart of a larger movement, not in the political sense but cultural and social movement forward. This was social reconstructionism and the progressive movements forward taken by divergent societal groups were spurred on by the improvements in the hard things of progress.

Bond of Union

 We've hauled some barges in our day, filled with lumber, coal and hay.
 And we know every inch of the way from Albany to Buffalo. Low bridge, everybody down,
Low bridge for we're coming to a town. 
And you'll always know your neighbor, you'll always know your pal.
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.

Improving the infrastructure and the connectedness of the country brought people of like minds and aspirations together rapidly. The building of the greatest project of it’s time in the world brought thousands of settlers via labour to the tiny outpost towns of Rome, Black Rock, Schenectady, Monroe, Seneca and Albany to name just a few. I have been stunned by the Historic plaques that line the i90 at rest stops and turn offs. While having a smoke, pee and coffee you can stop and read on your way about a series of singular events and people that when strung together created the basis for immense changes in society that we still feel today. Let’s face it. Some of these plaques are lame, and excuses to entice the traveler to drive 15 miles off course and hit some inevitably convenient gas station, liquor store or tchochke littered gift shop. But the idea of driving along a road that follows a similar route along a now mostly defunct canal that at one point linked the industry of New York with the resources of the interior and spawned the connections of politics, industrialization, commerce and social development, (breath) for a history buff is pretty hot! The making of the Erie Canal is of course an epic feat of engineering that was the result of an unstoppable need to be connected. In the words of Gerard Koeppel who also quotes the revolutionary war hero Lafayette when he toured the canal:

The canal’s effect on America was manifest: “(I)n the midst of these encroachments of civilization on savage nature, there is going on, with a rapidity that appears miraculous, that gigantic work, that grants the canal, which, in tightening the bonds of the American Union, spreads comfort and abundance in the wild through which it passes.

The “bonds of union” brought comfort and allowed more attention to bettering the human condition. It gave physical form to the power that existed in these communities and what resulted was greatness in the sum of its parts. New York State quickly moved into a much more powerful economic force as it was now linked with the trade of just not New York but the world. The Ohio canal was developed further linking this part of the country to the other great human and economic unifier, the Mississippi.

We Are The People

The protest movement, the change of society and the great powers of this time derived from actors in a moment supported by a will to be better, a need to be safer, healthier and happier and by politicians which had a vested interested in bettering “the home and hearth”.  A study of this time period by an armchair baby historian like myself requires the attention toward people like DeWitt Clinton who as governor of the state and commissioner of the canal project who had national aspirations but sacrificed these for creating the greatest project of the age. Vanity had much to do with this as much as charity but the politicians of this time show more of a simple accommodation of reality and connectedness to the people they represented than ours do now. They did this while mired in corruption with comparatively little transparency and exclusionary structures (no visible minorities and definitely no women).  New York State at this time gave rise to the nation’s 8^th president and important member of the transformative presidency of Andrew Jackson. Martin Van Buren or “the little magician” presided over state politics was a rival of Clinton and quickly made his impacts felt outside of the state. Later, the state would give us William Seward, who fought hard for his party’s nomination but lost out to little known “rail splitter” candidate from Illinois named Abe Lincoln. Seward by all rights should have won, should have been President but took the position of Secretary of State and for the years of the civil war served with honour and forged the new political identity of the union after the war. There are many political actors to numerous to mention in a little crap article like this but they all came of age in a time and place where the spirit of improvement and investment was alive. What this comes down to is a national story that highlighted a time and place where investments were made on a grand scale to improve the mind, body and soul of the republic. People fought and clawed their way to new lands and reformulated the idea of religion and community and were supported by their government in doing so. People decided to take it upon themselves and improve the physicality of their environment and built great towns, industry out of necessity and pride and were supported by there government (although begrudgingly in some cases albeit) It would take a brutal, brutal war to cleanse the nation of the last vestige or unfinished business of the revolution but what this time and place holds up to the light is how important and fragile our civilization really is. That the ideas that we hold dear are in truth not very old and could be argued still adolescent.

And I Thought This Was Just Going to Be A History Blog

There has been in the last 3 decades a consistent attack on the tenets of democratic freedom and justice. Why do we bother? I have been immersed in 18th century US history for the last year and I'm just starting to get it. This started as an exercise in information evacuation but as I was writing while watching the news it struck me that we are still fighting the same battles again and again. The struggle is forever in jeopardy. The work of great people is always being forgotten for political and economic expediency. 

In Oshawa, there is a point at the top of the hill on Harmony Rd. before Taunton that on a clear day you can see Rochester. Its smokestacks always caught my eye as a child. The news came from that city and Buffalo. Channel Seven. The music, the house fires, the tacky car dealer commercials, Commander Tom. That was Rochester. For me, now it’s Frederick Douglass. Lockport is not Lockport Gambino Ford to me anymore. It’s the site of an amazing engineering feat. A terminus for the aspirations of a nation being built. Of ideas manifest in labour, ingenuity, protest power and change. People crowded in tents by the tens of thousands to be at a political speeches with no chance of hearing the candidates but just to be there. But with no armed guards, no police on horseback. No fear. What we are going to be witness to in the next 3 days in Toronto is another meeting of international representatives while the people and the ideals of community and progress are going to be left on the other side of a great fence. Not much of what will be discussed inside the Bastille of the Toronto Convention Center will be called useful. It's hard to live inside history and come out looking at the fruits of modernity. Is Sarah Palin a perversion of the ideals first expressed in 1848? Is Obama someone that Douglass would be proud of or is he just a pawn in the Great Elite’s plan to slowly overcome the constrictions placed on capitalism by democracy through placation, deception and distraction?

The New York I can see from my room, and on a bike on a hill is the New York of events that strung together create a patchwork of change that enabled a stumbling new republic to stand on solid ground, a house undivided. Many friends have asked me will I be participating in the G20 protests. At first I was hesitant as the years have brought wisdom but also jadedness to political reform via shouting with a placard. But I will most likely be on the streets of my community tomorrow with friends, families, workers, politicians, writers, artists, musicians, and academics. I will remember Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emerson and Thoreau to name just a handful. We are all standing at a precipice where choices of inaction or choices against the greater betterment of the human condition and the physical environment will be choices not easily taken back or choices that can't be changed at all.  

___________________________________________________________________________

          Afghanistan was on the minds of a lot of smart people this weekend. Including, and I use the word smart cautiously when speaking of the Honourable Member from Central Nova Scotia, Peter MacKay. You see, I had a lovely little blog put together, that was going to be a full frontal assault laid at Prime Minster Harper and the opposition for allowing our petty domestic politics to meddle with such an incredibly important international situation such as Afghanistan. A country that has already been an international shitting ground for almost 40 years. But now, according to some reports on the weekend, we maybe changing our tune a little bit. You see, Canada has been planning to get the hell out of dodge next year. For me, this is one of those truly rare cosmic moments when the politicians on both sides see eye to eye but are both wrong. Wrong you say? Shouldn't we be happy to get our men and women home? "Fuck that country, they hid them terrorists, so let 'em rot" (dispatch from an Oshawa Tim Horton's this weekend-yay Oshawa!) It's decidedly harsh but reflective of a certain brand of Canadian conservative thought on this issue. The left has given this a pass as well. War is wrong, not the way to solve the issue, bring them home. As much as Paul Martin got us in there, he was just caught up in the worldwide "Let's Roll". But it seems there are rumblings that we are going to remain on in a "teaching role". The combat mission will end but the development and police training will continue. What does this mean? Is this the right approach? I know one thing for sure, this mission has not been discussed properly with the Canadian people. There is a mess of a mire of a shitstorm in Afghanistan but a national conversation on what we should do has always alluded the better sense of the Capital. More information that gets to the Canadian public the better. It may help the argument on both sides but before we truly leave our tools on the ground and the military work unfinished, and hand over protection of our civil servants, NGOs and private organizations to other NATO countries maybe we should look at the situation a little better, you think?

Pass the dutchie pon the left hand side?

The country is currently run by a seemingly de-legitimized President that, according to Peter Galbraith is a hash smoking corrupt erratic politician who we can no longer trust. But he is our guy. We put him there. Sure, there's a pretty good chance the elections last fall which were a fucking mess, were also very corrupt. But his presidency is a reflection of the country at this moment in time. As Fareed Zakaria said on the weekend, if we're thinking some Jeffersonian Democrat is going to come down from the sky like a repentant Judas on a white cross in full leathers with a gospel choir, this is Afghanistan-not gonna happen (he stopped at Jeffersonian Democrat). He is a leader from an ethnic majority of the country and there is no other option at this point. "Undermining" him does nothing but strengthen his enemies, and demoralizes the troops on the ground.

Security

As much as the elections last year are a reality check for the gestation process of democracy in the country, the security challenges that wreaked havoc on the election are a report card on the country's domestic police/military strength and training. Last year was one of the most violent years yet since the whole thing began. Kandahar has been racked with problems, essentially what were thought of as safe zones of operation have been compromised. The Taliban has gathered apparent strength and the fire power of some of their weapons of choice, like the trusty IED, has gone up significantly.

On the police force side, the mandate of the NATO mission is to create a police force with the size of 110,000 by the end of October. That's a lotta cops to train in one of the toughest regions in the world. Quality is out the window when you're talking about staffing a force of that size so quickly. In a land where narcotics are intricately linked to the economy, you can easily guess the pressures that there guys, who are mostly illiterate and poor to begin with are under to look the other way, big city America styles, with bagmen all over who are in the direct employ of your friendly neighbourhood Al Queda.

Our super smart friend, Dr. Stephanie Carvin, summed up her thoughts for me with this sit. rep.:

"1. We have no clear mandate nor any idea of what "success" looks like. (Although I'm pretty sure we know what failure looks like.)
2. The government there is corrupt and incompetent and is unable to assert authority. The people don't trust it and I can understand why!
3. We don't have enough people on the ground. Counter Insurgency theory tells us that we need something, like a 20:1 ratio of civilians to troops to be successful. I think in Afghanistan we have something like 70:1 over a gigantic area. Unless other countries are willing to commit (which they are not) then it's not going to work."

The conversation has not given us a clear idea of what we're shooting for. And we're pulling troops? I'm still not convinced Mr. MacKay.

Development

To say that the objectives and challenges of the development community that is working in Afghanistan are enourmous is unfortunately an understatement. The country exists at levels of industrialization that are pre-colonial in some regions. We are talking about nation building writ large. This is language straight from the Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA) website 

"Canada will invest up to $210 million over three years toward helping the Afghan government deliver basic services such as:

• education;
• vocational training;
• roads;
• job creation for Afghans, including promoting agricultural production and providing access to credit for entrepreneurs; and
• repairing infrastructure for irrigation and potable water"

Canada is part of a coalition of development but with a focus on the Kandahar region. Agricultural irrigation projects and school building are the main project foci going into 2011. What is clear to me is that we are trying to do the work of a generation on the timetable of an election cycle. CIDA et al and their progress and success are being evaluated in terms that are wholly unrealistic and the futility at times seems truly transparent, so much so that it almost feels like it's being set up for failure as an excuse to get out. With the advent of our apparent military withdrawal seeming still on course the question I have not been able to get answered is whether it makes sense at all to leave these folks to continue their work without protecting them ourselves and sticking with a military and police force training that can have a greater chance of success the longer we stay. 

Governance

There are essentially three forces of nation building being attempted in Afghanistan: security, development and governance. The realities of the work remaining are going to be effected the most by the outcome of the political and legal infrastructure that has to be "created". Again, a generational plan is what is required. This is a mini-Marshall plan that is being implemented in the country but one on a shoestring budget and one with a subtly different moral objective. When we rebuilt Europe and Japan we were looking at creating a safer world but also brining countries and regions back into the economic architecture of a world economy. Afghanistan is seen a security threat, a hole in the wall that needs to be filled to prevent spillage of terror and instability from gathering steam, which we have already seen-see Pakistan. The cynics also view it as just another pawn in the great worldwide energy war that is ramping up. It has geo-political strategic importance for oil and natural gas concerns. This may explain why the work that is being done may seem viewed as fly by night. But the work of democracy time and time again has been shown to be work best done from a place on the inside, from a place of truth and from the bottom up, not top down. 

The loya jirga, or grand council, the assembly of delegates traditionally selected from tribal leadership, is the form of governance that is being encouraged to solve national questions in a disparate and diverse country. In a report by Crisis Group these recommendations are made to solving what is a brain cramping complex issue:

"a convocation of a loya jirga with the express purpose of undertaking constitutional reform, including consultations on the role of the Supreme Court; separation of powers by enhancing the independence of the judiciary and legislature; and the strengthening of provincial and district level governance through a meaningful devolution of authority and resources;..."

Sounds amazing. Although well intentioned and brilliant on its own as an idea, it must seem to Afghans as 'sure, just do it, why don't you. Easy stuff. There's app for it somewhere'. And from NATO, it's on OUR timetable, because we can't afford to be there long enough to see something like this through in the "natural" period of time it will take to develop. This shit took our countries hundreds of years to develop. Sure there is a template now, which is the definition of comparative politics but still, this is decades, and I will say it again, not a couple of election cycles worth of work.

As an aside, another thing I have said before in my blog that bears repeating, my work is easy-this shit is hard. But too often musicians have been guilty of talking about politics from a thin top view level. "It's the war man". I praise those who do fight and shout, and don't just "shut up and sing". Especially now in such an environment where you can't rock the boat to hard or you may fall off and miss your paycheck. But it is a different time in our business and a different time in the world. We all have to be more informed and speak on issues from a place of intelligence and authority. The web can make an idiot out of you in a heartbeat and I feel that it's important to walk the walk. Rock n' roll should learn to be a little more academic and academics a little more rock n' roll. 

     What this boils down to is a question. Can we afford to leave Afghanistan? It requires a long view and a 360 degree view. Canada has been leaned on HARD over the last few months to re-think it's position by the US and Britain. Hillary Clinton has scolded us, the British Foreign minister wants to country punch us. America is in with an "uplift" strategy. Obama has a seriously short amount of domestic capital, both literally and figuratively to get results in his "right" war. His country is in MASSIVE debt and taking on domestic policy interventions that are going to have to find money from somewhere and the biggest line item on the hit list has got to be the military. Once the health care debate simmers down and jobs start rebounding, people will be looking at the trillions of bucks in hock to China and saying "whoa we gotta start cutting". How much time does that give everyone to do this work in Afghanistan? And how much can Canada realistically expect to get away with sneaking out the back door? You think NATO won't notice? Our country has a proud tradition of truly kicking ass when it counts. We just celebrated (for lack of a better term) the anniversary of Vimy Ridge. I have heard it said by American military folks "don't get in a fight with a Canadian". We have just over 3000 troops in Afghanistan. 3000 of us, I'm going on a national bragging tip here, are like 30000 other NATO troops. We are worth our weight in gold. We are a peaceful country but will fight hard for the creation and protection of democratic stability. We have somehow carved out a peaceful coexistence over one of the biggest land masses on Earth, with a vibrant economy and a strong national identity. We know what the good life really looks like and want to share that with open hearts and intelligent minds.

We lost another one today. I grew up in a Navy family. It's about service. My cousin has spent time in Afghanistan. It's about wanting to make it better. Not just hold the line, or hope for status quo, but change.

I believe in what we are doing there. We all know now that if the BILLIONS that were spent on Iraq to kill a tin pot dictator and find phantom WMDs were spent on this crucial country this would be an entirely different discussion. But sadly it's not, but one worth continuing to have.

__________________ 

http://www.afghanistan.gc.ca/canada-afghanistan/priorities-priorites/services.aspx?menu_id=46&menu=L

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.zakaria.gps/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040703685.html

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apicazo/2010/04/afghanistan-beyond-2011-its-done-deal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rabble-news+%28rabble.ca+-+News+for+the+rest+of+us%29&utm_content=Twitter

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3071&l=1#Current

“When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.”

This is going to be a strange post. I will give anyone the opportunity to back out from reading this…..now. If you are not an uber politico history geek, someone who can’t wait until Sunday to watch CNN, get your Fareed Zakaria on, then hit the NYT’s World and Politics section and finish the day with a killer book on US Antebellum history-run don’t walk from this post as you may fall into a learned, but deep coma to be revived 20 years from now Awakening styles and I don’t need that drama on my hands nor the guilt, lawsuits, and bad TV movies etc.

 If history is your thing then and you want to join me on the professor train than keep reading. This is my continuing attempt to sharpen the pencil that is my brain. It is an exercise to “download” as the kids say and free up some room in the idea trap for other things like thinking about what to eat tonight and where I left my glasses. I also really friggin’ dig American history. If you have followed my ramblings over the last year (first thank you, second why?! ) you may have noticed my crush on what de Tocqueville called “the greatness of America” and it’s history. The reason is simple and I will turn to that travelling Frenchman again as he said ,““When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.”

What follows is a survey of primarily the 1830s and 1840s. Where the country found it’s legs and the platform of its hegemony was constructed. Without the confluence of ideas, people, turn of events and that intangible quality of American spirit and ethic we would have a very, very different world. They say that all the answers are in history. I say that all the answers to America are in 2 decades of its history.

It’s unimaginable how much can happen in such a short period of time. To the frenetic ’it’s always the future’- world we live in today, 20 years is a generation or even still an epoch.  In the mid 19^th century, the changes that befell America in these 20 years are astounding and would have left those of the Revolutionary days still alive in abject shock, dismay and fear. It was a time of crystallization and firmament. On the one hand the seeds planted by the authors of the Revolution began to bear bitter fruit while on the other the protections and almost mythic like vision and forethought that guided the Constitution and creation of the republic began to show it’s true genius. The framework developed by the “fathers” protected the country just long enough for it to gather the head of steam of development that only a catastrophic civil war could retard.

Providence Shine Upon Thee

If there is one word that surmises the American outlook of this era it is Providence. Divinity was relied upon to explain what seemed unimaginable. The roots of American belief in its unearthly role in the shaping of the future are founded in part on the New England ethic and belief system. The birthright of the sons and daughters of New England was based on exceptionalism. They were the progeny of people who believed they were handpicked to go through the trials of marginalization, persecution and expulsion and because they held onto beliefs that had the price tag of poverty, untold hardship and death, they were rewarded with the bounty of heaven on Earth. The extent of that bounty became clearer as the westward move gathered force through the country’s expansion. Thomas Jefferson foretold that the future of America laid in its agrarian gifts. The farm and the fruit of the earth would provide and turn a small collection of states into a world power. The sheer abundance of land catapulted the American economy. With the invention of the cotton gin in the late 18^th century and the massive enforced subsidization of labour resulting from a slave economy the time it took to go from subsistence based net importer to exporter was relatively short and quickly became exponential.

The Revolutionary period, the early Antebellum and the “era of Good Feelings” were all birth pains. The solidification of America by way of the War of 1812 led to a peaceful time that was sleepy but much energy was being stored up. However, the Jacksonian Era for me is when America was born. The ideas of independence and the ancillary dreams of Adams and Washington of a democratic republic based on the rights and freedoms of man were moved to the next level. The converse dread of these two men was the realistic vision of Jefferson-a “political” nation of parties and a division of ideas, an adversarial system of governance was further developed. In fact, this period was the nursery of the “go ahead” society. The emergence of materialism was a definitive aspect of Andrew Jackson’s Presidency. Freedom for all to be all. It started with a rock n’ roll inauguration. The most debaucherous house party in the most esteemed house in the country marked the beginning of his Presidency. Spirits were high and the spirits were flowing. Music, dancing and brawling. It was more like an Irish wedding then the ushering in of the most “democratically” elected President. For the first time the “common man” was given the franchise. The aristocratic and elitist fears of the Revolutionary Gentlemen were finally cast aside. Although women and black people were still excluded-democracy with a giant asterisk. This was a symbolic match that started the fire of the next 20 years. If the common man could choose his leader than he could do anything. Materialism gained strength. America was about making money. Greed was good for the first time in the country’s history. Again, to de Tocqueville-   “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?” The protection of peace and disconnection from the troubles of Europe let the sons and daughters of liberty relax, let their hair down and focus on themselves and their dreams. People could dream for the first time. Dream about more than a shitty apartment in some stank European backwater. LAND. You could be anything anywhere. Remake yourself in the image one saw fit. God had granted you freedom and given you the largest piece of his back-forty to do with what you please. Go forth and multiply.

The materialism of the time and the refinement of its democracy-the good and the bad-were tempered by a spirit of improving the human condition. The 1830s laid the groundwork for the second revolution and the work done then tested the state through agitation and empowered the forces of democracy by also testing the government’s willingness to shut down freedom of expression and try to curtail the definitions of the freedom of man. The demands to improve the quality of the human condition were most acutely typified by the abolition movement. North and South, both literally and figuratively were entrenched by political decisions, a war with Mexico, the protestations of an emerging literati and result of voices seeded by the most educated nation in history. The sons and daughters of New England who were still grounded in piety and respect of God’s will, came to view the institution of slavery as a vile distortion of that will. They saw the dream of their America dying with every new day a slave was forced to create the great American economy and society but have no part of its benefits. The groundwork for the final revolution of the Civil War was laid by Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas to name just a few.

A Shrinking Giant Country

The events above are enough for any time period to call itself important. But while the society of America was in a great convulsion of change, its political and governmental infrastructure was transforming, modernity kicked into high gear. Distance was the great gift and obstacle of America. When Lewis and Clark reported their great findings on the size of the country, the collective inside voices of Jefferson and Hamilton, et al must have been “holy shit this country is big”.

Necessity is the mother of invention and the only way the conquering spirit of the Republic was going to be successful was through improvements in how to get around and how to get information to each other faster. When Jackson fought the last great battle of New Orleans in 1815, the war was over-but he had no idea. It took FOREVER to get anywhere. You can quickly enter into a hyperbole death spiral when talking about the enormity of the country and what it took to get from a to b. But four giant steps toward modernity came to bear during this period: The railroad, newspapers, steam power and the telegraph. Ya, all in this period. The West was won much later but the energy and ideas of the people of this era are to thank.

The country began to be viewed for the first time as finite. With all the improvements, expansion and construction, although in their time it would never be, a finality of growth was just perceptibly on the horizon. Part of this was also developed by some of the first great waves of immigration. When nearly a quarter of the Irish population left a famine stricken country, most of them heading to America, the idea that you need to stake your claim and get what’s yours took off. This was best conceptualized in the term coined by John O’Sullivan, a journalist who would forever be famous for distilling the great American idea down to two words-Manifest Destiny. In 1845 the last metaphorical spike in American transcontenentalism was driven into the collective psyche. When John Quincy Adams, then Sec. of State drafted The Monroe Doctrine, a new world paradigm was developed that many argue still drives the intention of the country today. A sphere of influence was defined and a line in the sand was drawn to any comers. This land is our land. You can come and take it if you try but we will defend it. The Monroe Doctrine was developed with Latin American dominance by Europe in mind and set a comfort zone for international interest. Manifest Destiny took it to another level. That it was Providence that we are to have the entire nation bounded by the oceans. It was an unstoppable fact that Americans were chosen to direct the future of the continent. It was an excuse to beg, borrow, buy and steal the remaining last land and before the 4^th decade of the 19^th century was up, the geographical extent of America as we know it today was more than on its way to being defined. Manifest Destiny and the spirit that brought it to fruition was the crowning philosophical achievement of the era and has gone on to guide the country’s view of the world and its role in it from the muddy roads of Polk’s Washington to the Green Zone of Iraq.

There is a certain irony in the fact that this era is named and therefore sadly defined by the fact that it was pre war (Ante Bellum). A time of some of the nations greatest achievements as a culture, society, and political entity is viewed, as something that was just setting the stage for the conflict that would tear the nation apart. This I think is a sad but an unavoidable reality. Admittedly, a great deal of the achievements that gave meaning to the period were also the cause of the civil war, but war is a failure, never an accomplishment. What America did accomplish in the middle of the 19^th century before the war has had a much more enduring and important impact on the nation that exists today than the civil war. Those 4 years were just another approach that maybe an older and stronger nation could have avoided. However, as a new student of this history I believe without the conquering spirit (good or bad) the pursuit of happiness, justice, development, and enlightenment from 1815 on, the United States would not have survived.

Context:

Number of distilleries in the United States in 1810: 14,000

Annul alcohol production of American distilleries in 1810: 25 million gallons

Number of Americans who drank liquor in 1810: 7 million

Amount of alcohol industry produced per American in 1810, including men, women, and children: 3 gallons (not counting cider, beer, or wine, so you can imagine how much the adults were drinking!)1

Population of the United States in 1850: 23,191,876

…White population as a percentage of the total: 84.3%

…Black population as a percentage of the total: 15.7%2

Year in which races other than black and white were first listed in the US census: 1860Number of free blacks in America in 1850: 434,495

…Number of slaves: 3,204,313

Male population as a percentage of the total in 1850: 51.02%

…Male population as a percentage of the white total: 51.28%

…Male population as a percentage of the black total: 49.78%

Average number of children born to women in antebellum America: 6-7

Average number of children born to women in America today: about 2

Decline in American birthrate from 1800 to 1850: 23%3

Increase in per capita income of American families from 1820-60: 100%

Increase in proportion of Americans living in cities and towns from 1820-60: 200%4

Number of newspapers (nationwide) in 1833: 1,200

…in 1860: 3,0005

Miles of rail laid in the US by 1850: 9,000 (the most in the world)

Miles of rail laid between 1850-60: 21,000 (giving the country a larger rail network than the rest of the world combined; train wrecks soon exceeded steamboat explosions as a prime cause of accidental death)6

Ratio of Americans living in cities in 1860: 1 in 6 (6.2 million out of about 30 million total)

Number of passengers on public transit in 1860: 70 million7

Average annual income for male manufacturing workers in urban New England from 1820-60: $323.25

…in rural New England: about $303.25

…in urban Middle Atlantic states (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey): $337.10

…in rural Middle Atlantic states: $292.588

Number of German Jews who immigrated to America during the 19th Century: 250,000 (additionally, several hundred thousand Germans, most of them Protestant, arrived in the 1850s after the failed revolutions of 1830 and 1848)

Source: http://www.shmoop.com/antebellum/statistics.html

More Stuff: 

American History by Era - Antebellum America: 1784-1850, Volume 4 Edited by William Dudley (http://www.amazon.com/American-History-Era-Antebellum-1784-1850/dp/0737707178/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b) 

American Lion by John Meacham (http://www.amazon.ca/American-Lion-Andrew-Jackson-White/dp/1400063256/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269044238&sr=1-1)

What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe (http://www.amazon.ca/What-Hath-God-Wrought-Transformation/dp/0195078942)