Engaging with American Democracy » October 16th: Revolutions, Civil War, Stability

October 16th: Revolutions, Civil War, Stability

Cold Open: The Value of College

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Plan for the Day

Battle of Hastings, 1066

This is the famous battle where the invading Duke of Normady, William the Conquerer, defeated the King Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, near Hastings, England. He really had no chance because a few people felt he was not the right king to succeed his child free brother, King Edward the Confessor. They include…

William installed loyal elites who formed courts and the government (and spoke French). Consider the English terms one uses in the kitchen: sautée, soufflé, sous-vide, etc. The Norman Conquest also ended the practice of slavery and introduced feudalism to secure the King’s wealth (and other nobles) who were obliged to pay the King a portion of their earnings from the land granted. The monarch owned all the land and let others use the land to grow crops and generate income. Even one’s heirs had to pay a tax before inheiriting the land.

The Magna Carta (aka. The Great Charter)

A group of elite nobles wanted to limit the King’s absolute reign over his subjects. The Church intervened with the Magna Carta to appease the nobles and allow King John–brother of King Richard I–to continue to rule within limits. A proto-Parliament (another French word) arose and slowly gained power over the centuries. Although we’re glossing over lots of history, there’s a common assumption that this was one of the first documents to state that people have rights. Although it’s tempting to claim this influenced the Declaration of Independence, it’s not that simple, and you’ll need to dig deeper. However, for our purposes, this marks a point where decendents of the Founding Fathers began to demonstrate that rulers need the consent of those they rule, AND they demanded rights.

Revolutions–Comparative Study

Think back to the first day of class when you were full of energy and excitement. I mentioned the Area of Focus for the course being Theoretical Frameworks, Ideals, and Principles of American Democracy. Under that were three points:

  • Define core principles of American democracy
  • Analyze how core principle(s) of American democracy have been interpreted and redefined over time 
  • Analyze how the principle(s) of American democracy differ from other democratic models

I hadn’t planned to cover that third point very much, but I think comparing the American Revolution to three key revolutions is worthwhile before moving onto the American Civil War. I’ll try not to make this too historian, but I need to set the scenes of the following Revolutions:

  • 1640s: English Revolution (really a series of civil wars…I’ll explain)
  • 1789: French Revolution
  • 1917: Russian Revolution (Bolshevik Revolution)
  • 1776: American Revolution
  • Time Permitting: Iranian Revolution

English Revolution

This was a series of three Civil Wars, but we’ll focus on them as a whole. These wars are also referred to as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms: England, Scotland, Ireland.

  • 1625-1642: King Charles I ruled as an absolute monarch who often ignored Parliament
    • Raised taxes without consent, married a Catholic, didn’t come to the aid of Protestants at key moments
    • He dissolved Parliament many times
  • 1642-1645: English and Scottish Parliamentaries had enough of King Charles I and they fought
    • They won and demanded a consitutional monarchy
    • King Charles I said “no” and was imprisoned
  • 1649: Off with his head!
  • 1649-1653: The Commonwealth of England led by Oliver Cromwell
    • Cromwell began dissolving Parliaments…sound familiar?
    • Lots of fighting, including intervening in the Colonies (the proto-United States)
  • 1653-1658: Cromwell Rules as Lord Protector
    • Used force to quell dissent
    • Was offered the role as monarch by Parliament (ironic)
    • Parliament became more dominated by radicals
    • 1658: Cromwell dies, and his son assumes the role but can’t hold on
  • 1660: The army restores Parliament and invites Charles II to be King
    • Restoration
    • Digs up Cromwell’s body and “executes” it…

Many Colonists were in favor of Cromwell because they were opposed to the King’s harsh rule. Stability returns to the Crown with William & Mary in 1688.

French Revolution (1789-1799)

Both The English and French Revolutions begin with oppressive economic conditions (Russian Revolution, too). These conditions were quite dire in France. The Monarchy overspent, and a type of parliament steps in:

  • 1789: The Estates General
    • First Estate: the nobility
    • Second Estate: the clergy (high and low)
    • Third Estate: the commoners
      • Were unhappy with the Nobility’s and Clergy’s proposals
      • Spun off and created the National Assembly
      • A group of the Third Estate went looking for weapons and stormed the Bastille
  • 1789-1792: Constitutional Monarchy
    • King Louis XVI was virtually under house arrest
    • The Jacobin Clubs (debaters, by the way) pushed for Republicanism
  • 1792-1793: The National Convention Trial of King Louis XVI
    • Voted to execute him
    • A series of crises ensues
  • 1793, October: Constitution suspended
    • Marie Antoinette…loses her head
    • Lots more lose their heads
  • 1793-1794: Reign of Terror by Maximilien Robespierre
    • Ends…with his head getting cut off
  • 1794-1795: Thermidorian Reaction
    • Executions virtually ended
    • Food shortages and other domestic strife
  • 1795-1799: French Directorate and Constitution
  • 1799: Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état ends the French Revolution
    • 1799-1804: First Consul of the French Republic
    • 1804-1814: Emperor of France (Part I)
    • 1815: Emperor of France (Part II)

There’s a very good argument to be made that the French Revolution is held as some perfect (Platonic…?) revolution that all others are judged by. Again, I bring this up merely for comparisons with the American Revolution.

Russian Revolution

We’re going to just hit the highlights of this, but, again, this is a looking back at events and possibly forcing them to fit the French Revolution’s structure. It’s still useful for thinking about how revolts/rebellions/revolutions come about. Often, they start from misery.

  • 1890-1910: Rapid (and lopsided) industrialization
    • Population boom
    • Russian workers begin to increasingly strike
    • 1905: Bloody Sunday
      • Soldiers ire on demonstrators in St. Petersburg
      • kill between 0-4,000 (sources are not accurate)
      • Led to a quasi-parliament, the Duma (Tsar still had control)
  • 1914-1917: World War I does not go well for the Tsar’s army
    • Troop morale low, desertions high
    • Causualties were very high, which led to the officer class being increasingly filled by working-class peasants
    • Inflation rises
    • Food shortages
  • 1917: February Revolution
    • Striking Workers
    • Riots ensued
    • Tsar Nicolas II ordered them put down
    • Many in the army refused and revolted
    • The Duma strips the Tsar of his title and places him and his family under house arrest (sound familiar?)
  • 1917: Vladimir Lenin returns from exile
    • Lenin’s Bolsheviks form (Red Army)
    • A moderate-conservative White Army opposed the Bolsheviks
  • 1918: Russian Civil War
    • Officially ends the Romanov Dynasty
  • 1922: Establishment of the Soviet Union
    • Lenin dies in 1924
    • Joseph Stalin becomes General Secretary
    • He has beef with the more moderate Leon Trotsky
  • 1924-1953: Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror
    • Creates a secret police
    • Eliminate rivals
    • Great Purge
      • Hundreds of Thousands murdered
      • Leftist sympathizers from outside soured on Stalin
      • Trotsky, exiled in Mexico, is assassinated
  • 1953: Nikita Khrushchev becomes the new leader
    • Central Committee rule is restored
    • Gulags reformed
    • Amnesty granted
    • Purges ended
    • Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s atrocities in a speech called “On the Cult of Personality”

Anatomy of a Revolution

Although this analysis is going on 90 years old, it’s still valuable to help identify commonalities (and, therefore, departures from) of revolutions. Historian Crane Brinton famously compared revolutions to sickness and identified Four Stages of Revolutions:

  • Moderates take over from the old ruling class (ancien régime)
  • Radical elements take over
  • Reign of Terror!
  • Thermidorian Reaction
    • The group that caused the revolution loses power
    • The next group looks much like the original ones in power…the old guard

Basically, a revolution starts with civil unrest directed at the power that be. A group of moderates takes power from the status quo group, but radical elements agitate for more heads, so the moderates start to look like the old guard. The radicals start killing, and a violent crisis ensues that gets rid of non-radicals. Eventually, a “thermidor” comes in to quell the terror and takes over. Ironically, that thermidor rules similarly to the old guard…let’s discuss.

The American Revolution

Do revolutions–changes in governmental structures–have to be excessively violent affairs? Well, maybe. If we look at small battles or even a series of battles, we might claim they’re the causes of revolution; however, revolutions also involve social changes that don’t happen overnight. What happened after the British surrender and end the American Revolutionary War?

  • Articles of Confederation don’t secure a stable economy; no strong central government
  • The Constitution creates a central government
  • George Washington is President for two terms (1789-1797) and steps down from power
  • John Adams is President for one term (1797-1801) and is voted out; peaceful transfer of power
  • More Virginians–the most important State–are elected
    • Four of the first five Presidents are Virginians (1789-1825)
    • Seven of the first twelve Presidents ar Virginians (1789-1845)
    • Eleven of the first seventeen Presidents were born in the South
      • Even though Illinois is the “Land of [Abraham] Lincoln,” he was born in Kentucky

What’s the significance of the list of Presidents and where they’re born? Consider this in the context of stability, continuity, and precedent.

Crane Brinton on the American Revolution, Radicals, and Lazy Voters

Three of our four revolutions — the English, French, and Russian, have courses in general surprisingly similar. All have a social or class rather than a territorial or nationalistic basis….All are begun in hope and moderation, all reach a crisis in a reign of terror, and all end in something like dictatorship — Cromwell, Bonaparte, Stalin. The American Revolution does not quite follow this pattern, and is therefore especially useful to us as a kind of control.
…
The American Revolution was predominantly a territorial and nationalistic revolution, animated throughout by patriotic American hatred for the British. On the other hand, it was also in part a social and class movement, and as time went on its social character came out more and more strongly. It never quite went through a reign of terror, though it had many terroristic aspects, usually softpedaled in school and popular histories. (Brinton 24)

Except perhaps in America, we find the ruling classes in the old regimes markedly divided, markedly unsuited to fulfill the functions of a ruling class. Some have joined the intellectuals and deserted the established order, have indeed often become leaders in the crusade for a new order; others have turned rebels, less because of hope for the future than because of boredom with the present; others have gone soft, or indifferent, or cynical. (Brinton 55)

In all our societies these radicals were very conscious, and usually very proud, of their small numbers. They felt definitely set off from their countrymen, consecrated to a cause which their countrymen were certainly not consciously and actively equal to. Some of the radicals may have satisfied themselves that they really represented the better selves of their fellow countrymen, that they were the reality of which the others were the potentiality. But here and now they were very sure that they were superior to the inert and flabby many. (Briton 152)
…
Mere laziness, an inability to give to political affairs the ceaseless attention revolutions demand, is also instrumental in keeping the man in the street from expressing himself. He gets fed up with the constant meetings, the deputations, the papers, the elections of dogcatchers, general inspectors, presidents, the committees, the rituals, the ceaseless moil and toil of self-government on a more than Athenian basis. At any rate he quits, and the extremists have the field to themselves. (Brinton 154)

So how do you really stop a revolution?

Causes of the American Civil War

I’m sure this is a review, but let’s consider the following in light of the other “revolutions”:

  • Slavery: considered immoral
    • Fight over new States: free or slave
    • States’ Rights
    • Slave ownership concentrated with wealthy Southerners
  • Northern Industrialization
    • Waves of European Immigrants to the Northeast and Midwest
    • High Birth Rate in these areas
    • Why is population important for a Republic?
  • Election of Abraham Lincoln
  • The North’s refusal to disband the Union

Next Class

I’m sure we’ll be covering the rest of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s excerpt from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, so be ready for that. Then, we’ll move on to Abraham Lincoln’s “The Emancipation Proclamation” (1863). Don’t forget to do Weekly Discussion Post #6 before Friday, 10/17, 11:07pm.

Work Cited

Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution. Vintage, 1965. Original work published in 1938.