The Land That Has Never Been Yet - Part II

Scene on Radio’s The Land that Has Never Been Yet - Episode 3: The Cotton Empire and Episode 4: The Second Revolution

This week, I’m not at home, and have a change in my routine, which has meant less consistent learning. I have been slowly listening to two more episodes of Scene on Radio’s “The Land That Has Never Been Yet” podcast, and am re-capping them in this post. Episode 3 is about the United States pre-Civil War and the US economy grounded in cotton, and Episode 4 is about Reconstruction after the Civil War. While the ideas from the first episode generally were not new to me, I realized that I really didn’t know anything about Reconstruction. I know I learned about it in 8th grade, but that’s a long time ago. Having read Gone With the Wind several times (also the last time being more than 8 years ago), I’m pretty sure that influenced what I thought Reconstruction was, but of course, the story follows a white woman and is whitewashed. So I learned a lot about Reconstruction and how that changed the country, which I’ll recap below. As a note, the ideas in this podcast are grounded in research by experts, but it’s hard to listen and write it all down (it would take forever if I did), so if you are reading and questioning, I encourage you to listen for yourself.

Episode 3: The Cotton Empire

Episode 3 picked up after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and talked about the history of the country until the Civil War. In writing the Constitution during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the framers did not use, the word slavery in the document, but wrote around it, and openly discussed it (you can check out James Madison’s notes). About 40% of the framers were slave holders, and the new Constitution allowed slavery to continue. In fact, some people thought slavery would fade away after a couple of decades.

During (and after) this time, the US economy was based on cotton, with the US producing 88-95% of the cotton sold in Liverpool, the world’s biggest cotton market at the time. The invention of the cotton gin in 1794 increased cotton production, which required an increase in slaves/efficiency of slaves to keep up. This led to the start of a global capitalist industrial economy in the US, and slavery was integral to that. This increased production not only required increased labor, but more land. This led to expansion into the Southeast United States by pushing out Indigenous tribes/nations through treaties that generally were not honored and led to violence. I learned that John Quincy Adams was the only (?) president in early history to try to honor Native treaties, but it turns out he wasn’t re-elected and was succeeded by Andrew “Indian Killer” Jackson. The episode also touched on Jacksonian democracy under Andrew Jackson which expanded voting rights for white men, but was completely supportive of slavery and spearheaded violent removal of Native people from their land.

A major theme of this episode was the relationship between democracy and economic growth. Rather than viewing these ideas as ones that went together (like peanut butter and jelly, as Chenjerai’s metaphor went), the hosts posited them on a sort of scale, where the more democracy you had, the less economic growth you had, and vice versa. While our markets are free, there was (and still is?) the idea that you have to “reign in democracy to keep the country safe for capitalism.”

The wealth during this time also accumulated under a few wealthy people. Wealth was accumulating among slaveholders, but slave holding was expensive, and slaveholders were among the wealthiest people in the country. They held a lot of political influence too, especially in creating barriers for voting for non-wealthy white folks, like poll taxes, needing to own land, and residency requirements (hard if you're always working on the move) in order to vote. The country seemed to prioritize wealth for a few over democracy for all. In the end, more wealth for a few folks, did not move country toward democracy for most people, especially when it caused the increased genocide of Indigneous people and more enslaved Africans. Some people push back on the idea that “American was built on the backs of slaves,” with an argument something like “Slavery was inefficient and unprofitable which is why it went away.” However in reality, it was super profitable and helped kickstart American Industrial economy and consumer economy.

A statement that struck me was the idea that it was easier to quantify the United States’ economic expansion than the toll taken on human lives, something that still rings true today.

Episode 4: The Second Revolution

This episode focused on Reconstruction, also referred to as the “Second Founding” or “Second Revolution” which took place between 1863 and 1877. Reconstruction created a temporary surge in democracy (pushed for more than the founding fathers did), and some people say that this time period was more important for democracy than the country’s founding. After the Civil War, about 4 million Black folks were freed. During this time, land and education mattered, as education could move you up in society, as could holding land. Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist freed people, and they did things like build schools and hospitals and helped folks negotiate labor.

The first Republican-controlled congress tried to create a multi-racial democracy by passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. The 13th amendment freed slaves, the 14th amendment granted citizenship to anyone born in the US, and the 15th amendment decreed that voting rights could not be determined by race. Someone in the podcast brought up that these three amendments really remade the constitution. In 1867, Congress imposed martial law on Southern states so that they had to hold constitutional conventions to incorporate freed people into their governments. For example, South Carolina made a new state blueprint that gave all men the right to vote, regardless of race or land owned. Therefore, the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1868 was representative of the demographics of the state at the time which was majority Black (88 Black members of the House and 67 White members of the House). Although things were looking up for freed slaves, white southern backlash started up after the war, and did not let up. Things like passing Black codes to prevent people from voting and vagrancy laws that allowed Black people to be arrested for even walking down the street disenfranchised Black folks. Violence was used to stop Black folks from voting and running for office - leading into 1870 elections in particular, white terror groups targeted voters and elected officials and their families to keep them from the polls. A broader terror campaign was aimed at reversing Reconstruction, often leaving Black folks more vulnerable to death than they were as slaves. An estimated 53,000 Black folks were murdered in the South during the 3 decades after the Civil War.

The 1876 election was the last one under full-fledged Reconstruction. During this election, the presidential election was contested, and the parties cut a backroom deal where Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected under the agreement to pull federal troops out of the South. During this same election year, the elections for Governor and State Legislature was also contested in South Carolina. With the Federal government withdrawing support and refusing to mediate, white supremacist Democrats took control in 1877, flipping the demographics of the government again and removing Black folks broadly from the state government. By 1890, many Southern states were re-writing their constitutions to disenfranchise Black voters. By 1900, Jim Crow was in full force.

Prior to Reconstruction (and even during it I suppose), abolition of slavery was a radical idea supported by an unusual combination of people, including slaves (who, you know, wanted to be treated as humans), radical Republicans (who wanted slaves to be treated as humans), and wealthy Northerners (who wanted to keep the country together and saw abolishing slavery as the way to do it). After the end of war, the wealthy Northerners disassociated from this group as if to say, “We’ve done enough here - let’s move on to other problems.”

A myth that has been perpetuated about Reconstruction is that it failed because Black people were not ready to hold or able to hold political power responsibly. In reality, they joined a system that was designed so that they would fail. As host John Biewen stated, “The more details I learn about US history, the more painful the reality is.” I find this true as well.

At the end of the episode, the hosts reflected on the question of “What does government really do?” (like what is it intended for?). Generally, white folks saw government as something to protect them, and they saw this being threatened with the freeing of slaves (hence the backlash during Reconstruction). Reconstruction was a radical experiment in political democracy, but economic priorities were still driving everything. For example, there was still belief in the sanctity of private property, regardless of what went into acquiring that property. A really powerful idea that shifted my thinking was if the government is seen to protect property and economic power, and if economic power is distributed in a profoundly unequal way, then the government will not serve the interests of people equally.

Another idea brought up in this episode that I’ve been hearing echoed a lot recently is that “while White people are learning, Black people are dying.” This for me is an impetus to take action while learning and a drive to continue learning.