An Inconvenient History Thread

[Mechaman]

Hello everyone!

What is this you may ask?  Well it is simply a consortium of some very Historically Inconvenient facts for this forum at large.  This has been made due to the demand for a thread highlighting the hilarious modern attempts at interpreting historical politics.  Let me begin:

The Federalist Party: NO Coalition of Bleedingheart Liberals:

1. Alexander Hamilton, for all of his economic and fiscal mastery, was not a good man.  In fact he was an economic elitist who laid the groundwork for class warfare in America by instituting a regressive tax system that forced Scot-Irish Appalachian farmers into a generation of poverty while using minimum tax coercion on their urban neighbors.  Wow, this probably would've been okay not bolded, but I thought it was necessary to emphasize the class based nature of this.  The descendants of those people who had settled Ulster and then later the Appalachian backcountry were widely regarded as of "poor character" if not subhuman.  Hamilton, and his ilk, being defenders of the traditional British system no doubt inherited the economic elitism that came with it, instituting this sort of regressive tax policy that disadvantaged the poor and "uncouth" while benefitting the richer merchant classes of the urban areas of the country.  Washington's handling of the matter was the definition of moderatism and was a far cry from the "wipe them out" mentality that Hamilton and his supporters wanted to see happen after the initial tax resistance.

2. Hamilton's Federalist Party was not a principled anti-slavery party.  No one is going to deny the inherent hypocrisy of many Democratic Republicans being slave owners, okay?  But let's not pretend that the Federalist Party was an actively anti-slavery party outside of parts of New England (and even then . . . . . ).  Certain land owning elitists in the Carolinas were reliable supporters of Hamilton and his ilk throughout the early era of the nation.  Hamilton himself was anti-slavery, but he certainly made allowances in the company he kept and endorsed.  Thomas Pinckney, after all, was a very good friend of his.  This is the shortest point I'm going to make, as I believe even a casual stroll through Wikipedia will blow holes through this embarrassing misconception of American History.

3. Federalist dogma, ie conservative dogma, was in direct opposition to the ideals of liberalism. Why else would they be opposed so strongly to the French Revolution?  Regardless if you think the bloodshed in the Revolution was justified, it embodied the nature of liberalism both then and still now.  America was a Republic in an era when many European nations were ruled by monarchs. The Divine rule of Kings (or their advisors, depending on how you look at it) was unofficial doctrine of these states for most of recorded history.  In that vein, the conservatives in America, ie the Federalists, are actually liberals!  Sure, the Revolution was based off of conservative ideals, like "no taxation without representation" and the colonies wanting their rights as British citizens respected.  However, the end result can not, especially with the establishment of the Checks and Balances of American Government, be called "conservative" in the context of the times.  However, the end goal of the Federalists was a strong central American government that implemented and acted on policies that overwhelmingly favored the wealthy urban elites at the expense of practically everyone else.  Before this sounds like too much of a hack attack piece, supposedly by doing so the Feds believed that the prosperity of the upper classes would "trickle down" to the lower and middle classes and thus produce wealth.  By that observation, Ronald Reagan would have more in common with the old age Federalists than LBJ and FDR.  Liberal dogma of the time, which was defined as "upholding the Revolution!" was in direct contrast.  Liberalism was defined by an upholding and assertion of the rights of the non-elite (though of course, not always all of the non-elite, as exhibited by the grey area of slavery) and their rights to a vote and association.

4. Which brings me to the fourth point.  The Alien and Sedition Acts were a natural consequence of an Anglo Protestant supremacist mentality. Everyone knows that the Acts were passed in regards to the anti-administration rantings of various Democratic Republicans against John Adams and other high up officials in the wake of the Quasi War.  What is really underscored here, is the portions of the legislation that negatively impacted many Americans, specifically French and Irish citizens and residents of the United States.  The earlier French Revolution was seen as horrifying to the many staunchly religious conservatives in the Northeast who saw the Revolution, as well as the sympathy many DRs had with it, as a grave threat to the stability of the nation and it's trade relationship with the mother country.  Democratic excesses, they felt, would lead to unintended consequences that would lead to the ruination of society, which is why voting, holding offices, and other democratic exercises should be limited to tax paying property owners.  Also unsaid is that many of these people believes strongly in a "rule by the few fit to rule".  The coinciding of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the passage of the Acts, signed by President Adams, is not as great of a mystery.  The Celts were widely regarded as subhumans who had a natural tendency towards crime, poverty, anarchy, and chaos.  This isn't a prejudice that was solely held by people who voted Federalists, but it was far more pervasive than in the egalitarian minded ethos of Democratic Republican voters.  The Rebellion therefore was cast as the natural slippery slope result of the revolutionary trend, going from well meaning concerned citizens who felt their rights weren't being represented to people demanding the heads of kings and queens to unfit and uncouth savages getting the idea that they could overthrow the rule of the noble races.  In short, the A and S Acts were the consequences of an elite that was bent on re-establishing the dominance and supremacy of their culture over the "Lessors" that had been so for generations before.
That this last point has been largely whitewashed in American History classes is a testament to the great revisionism inherent in the Ivory Tower class (who by their very nature are the real "victors").

5. And this is probably one of the big slam dunk points to be made in this thread: Hamilton and his cohorts set about events in motion that would encourage the formation of standing armies in America.  Washington and crew readily used army expeditions into the heart of the "west" to provoke attacks from Native American tribes on them in order to push for continual expansions of the American Army.  For a party that stated it's repeated opposition to expansion of the west this is both "ironic" and signs of dishonest intent.  Hamilton later used the ghost of a French invasion of the American mainland, which Federalist President John Adams called "as likely as a French invasion force landing on the moon!"  It is almost an unwritten truth that Hamilton was raising this army for future incidents like the Whiskey Rebellion to quell popular discontent where it may arise.  Hamilton's Machiavellian schemes in going about this in a way that can only be described as "Blofeldesque" certainly raises questions about his and other Federalist good intentions.

[Mechaman]

How is this specifically inconvenient for posters on the Atlas? I've yet to see any lefty on here give any special praise unto the Federalists.

Oh good fellow, it will get more inconvenient later.  ANd yes, I am biased, but I will put on my best Howard Zinn impersonation and bash both sides.

I am, after all, at heart thoroughly anti-elitist.

[Mechaman]

Okay, part II:

The Democratic Republican Party: Not very libertarian at all. No really, they weren't

1. The Whole Radical Yeoman Agrarian Society Thing: The one major failure of the DRs in almost everybodys' opionion.  Let's just say that it was a simpler time and many saw the drift towards the cities as the succumbing of men to the vice, sin, and greed.  This of course is much different from what we now think of as "libertarianism" (really just a bunch of robo-reactionarism who highjacked a genuine left wing ideology at the start of the Cold War), which has at it's root a fundamental belief in the supremacy of the free market.  While there was agreement between the "liberal" scholars of the day who preached the Invisible Hand doctrine with the old days Republicans, this was a far different mindset than what we consider to be "libertarianism".  Both ideologies believed that a lack of government interference (though not in practice for the DRs as we will see in a minute) would leave men best to themselves.  However, the Jeffersonialist belief in the supremacy of the individual (unless they are black, Native American, or some other non-white minority whose land they're taking over) was more rooted in what was an opposition to the way things were run for centuries with the view that government was around to harm the commoner and strengthen the elites.  Many "libertarians" today, while they do genuinely believe that governments have a sum negative effect on the common person and that if it weren't for the state more people would be rich, often take the sides they do out of a belief in the supremacy of capitalism and somewhat (emphasis) pro-business views (though not excessively, many "libertarians" are very skeptical of big business like many liberals but have a different take on it) that wouldn't gel with the typical activist doctrinaire of the Democratic Republican Party.  The DR hardcore follower would argue that big cities represent a grave threat to American liberty, most "libertarians" would probably see the growth of said cities as a net benefit and a proof that capitalism works.
This is just talking about the theoretical differences, mind.  When we get into how the Democratic Party actually worked, the differences get LEGION.

2. Proto-Manifest Destiny: "Libertarians" are defined usually by having a very strong opposition to the use of force to accomplish one's objectives, playing "World Police" and like to criticize the growing of America into an "Empire, not a Republic!"  Funny then that many of them link their ideological ancestry to Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans, who actually viewed the entire continent as their oyster to do with as they pleased.
As has been alluded to repeatedly, Jefferson and other "enlightened liberals" of their day believed it was the white man's sacred duty to subdue and civilize the lessor races.  This was, in a way, proto-humanitarianism (but really anything but).  Sadly enough, Jefferson and other Pax Americana supporters forgot that if you want to take over a continent it requires a lot of dead bodies.  But it didn't matter, the "savage" races were too dim witted to know what was good for them and Jefferson and his boys were coming to the rescue!
Compare and contrast with the stereotype that libertarians wouldn't stop Hitler.

3. Embargo?  No way!: Yes way Ted.  By the 1810s the DRs had thrown away the book on "free trade" and were just going with what the hell they felt like on that front.  Of course, Henry Clay was a prominent Republican of that time, to give you an idea of how religiously they took "free trade".  In fact, by 1812 prominent Republicans like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun (what?  You're kidding me!) were openly advocating for the same rates the dreaded Hamilton was calling for just two decades earlier. The average tariff was actually higher under Jefferson than it was under Adams.  Before the war the evil First Bank of the United States was ended, almost right after the war it was re-established under overwhelming Democratic Republican rule.  As the DRs became more powerful, they became more and more protectionist, far from the laissez faire doctrine they were preaching in the 1790s and far from the "no borders" views of libertarian advocates.

More to come, hopefully.

[Mechaman]

Sorry about the delay guys.

I'm currently reading up on some material that will give me an idea of what to talk about next.  I'm hoping for something to do with early 19th century society.

[Mechaman]

ah, Mecha?

I am reading some books on Thomas Jefferson and the Revolutionary War Era.  I think I'll cover the actual reasons for the Revolution and the sides involved.  An update that should be coming up in a night or two.

[Mechaman]

Boom!  Update!

The American Revolution: Different Players, Different Reasons:

Why is this necessary?

From my experience with Revolutionary War discussions it seems that there are usually a couple of sides.  First there is the side that says that the Revolution was just a bunch of rich men throwing a hissy fit over a few taxes and used the guise of a genuine movement to advance their greedy causes.  The second is that the revolution was the greatest thing to ever happen in the history of mankind and that the British were literal tyrants in every way (Mel Gibson's The Patriot is the defining straw of this hyperbole, turning every British officer into a dogkicker along the way).  So yes, I thought an honest look at the players is necessary.

1. At it's worst, British Rule was moderate villianry, not The New Rome: Believe me, I have no reason to downplay how bad the British Empire was.  There were elements of British rule that were exceptionally horrible on and off during their Empire phase. It would be a great insult to my Irish heritage to at all suggest that British rule was free and fair.  The American Revolution, in my view, was a more than fair response against the injustices of British rule.  By the liberal standards set forth in the later Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, British rule failed greatly.
Now, with that said, British rule in America was far from some of the doomsday totalitarian regime in the 18th century that is sold by some.  In fact, in some cases, America got off light compared with the rest of the kingdom (especially with taxation, which many Parliament members commented on).  Rule wasn't entirely hands off, but they at trusted Americans enough to form their colonial legislatures and even *gasp* elect their own representatives.  Further, during the Revolution, British army officials and governors were willing to free the slaves of landowners (IIRC, some Royal Governors had the authority to emancipate the slaves, which is what Lord Dunmore of Virginia threatened to do in 1775) if they fought on the side of the Brits.

2. Yes, there was a clear financial motivation for revolution: Many of the British laws that the colonists were up in arms against had pretty negative affects on commerce and the activities of certain landed interests.  Basically, the colonial elites who were up in arms against the British had the concern that continued British rule threatened their freedom to commerce and profitable trade by anchoring the colonies to the Mother Country.  With the war debt of the French Indian Wars, it was inevitable that some policies that would negatively affect the economic elites in American society would come about.  This isn't to say that the gripe about "no taxation without representation!" isn't true, but merely that as the British forced more and more unpopular laws on the colonies, a growing group of elites felt that the Crown was strangling their commerce.  Further, threats from various Governors about emancipating slaves in unruly states also made some slaveholders quite nervous.  Overall you could say, the America elites viewed the Revolution, which was at first seen as a crazy idea propelled by a few radicals, as a necessary means to solidify their influence and authority.
Were they the only ones who benefitted from it?  Hell no.  Which brings me to Part 3.

3. Religious Freedom: At a time when it actually meant something: With the exception of the former colonies of New Amsterdam, religious tolerance and freedom wasn't exactly Colonial America's strong suit.  In fact, Thomas Jefferson's crusade for Religious Freedom began as a member of the House of Burgessess fighting against the Anglican domination of society at the time.  In the state of Virginia at the time it was a crime to not to baptize infants in the Anglican church, "dissenters" were denied office, and children could be taken from their parents if the parents failed to profess the prescribed creeds.  The state of Connecticut had the Congregationalist Church as an established state church well until the 1810s, which forced members of other religious denominations to give a tithe to that church.  Catholic residents were discriminated against strongly.  Penal laws were enforced especially strong in the colony of Maryland where Catholics were denied the right to vote, worship publicly, hold office, practice law, and establish parochial schools.  Land taxes were doubled on Catholic landowners during the French and Indian War, due to suspicion that Catholics were allies of the French.  Large numbers of Prebyterians from Ulster immigrated to America to escape the discrimination encountered back in Ireland and ended up forming a strong base of Patriot support during the Revolution due to resentment against British rule and the Anglican establishment.
Religious minorities who felt discriminated against by the Anglican elite and the Royal authorities, had a strong reason to jump on the Revolution bandwagon.

4. George Washington was a pretty mediocre general: Had to be stated.  If he had been a more strategically effective general who wasn't obsessed with recapturing New York, the war could've been decided much earlier (probably in 1778) as the British force in America, hell the world, was pretty doggone tiny and ineffective given it's reputation.  The total British force was 96,000 men.  Yes, I mean the entire worldwide force at the time of the revolution.  You are not misreading that.  The American force was much smaller at only 40,000 men.  Not only that, they were armed with weapons with very inferior accuracy and range to the weapons that the French had supplied the Americans with.  SO it is with no surprise that Lord North was actually begging the King to let him resign in peace so he wouldn't have to subdue the rebellion.
And yet, with all those factors working in his favor, Washington managed to make the war a six year long campaign and almost get caught by British soldiers SEVERAL times.  Dear lord, Stevie Wonder could've made a better general.

I'll try to come up with more tomorrow.

[Mechaman]

Now that I displayed my utter ignorance of military matters. . . . . prepare for another update hopefully sometime this weekend.  I plan on writing a few words on New England society of the late 18th-early 19th century.  It might take a few days to prepare, due to what I think are underlooked/misunderstood issues of the time (which are pretty numerous).

I'll keep you guys posted.

[Mechaman]

It might take a few days to prepare, due to what I think are underlooked/misunderstood issues of the time (which are pretty numerous).

That's pretty much the case for any period of history.

Of course.  Spoiler: what I'm mainly addressing is this idea that some had that the New England of the 19th century is the same New England of the 21st century.  Which, just looking at demographic changes since then, is just plain wrong.

[Mechaman]

Alright! It's finally going to happen!  Tonight!

I got the points on a word document and just need to finish on a few hyperlinks and bolded points as well as a good closer.

After that it should be done.

Be warned though, this entry will be very controversial, due to my biases.

[Mechaman]

Before you read further, consider this note from the author:
I don’t intend to come into this claiming any objectivity.  In fact, a number of these points will be made with the expected amount of moral self-righteousness you would expect with this avatar.  I claim no shame in this admission, as I believe there are self-righteous revisionist views that are deserving to be addressed (really, the point of this thread, as well as to expose some of my own biases).

Part IV: Old New England, not the bleedingheart liberal region you think:

1. The divide over the slavery issue between Democrats and Whigs was nominal: In what will probably be a brainscrew for a lot of people reading this, I’d like to point out that in the North there were many Democrats who were abolitionists.  The whole “Whigs were anti-slavery and the Democrats were pro-slavery” spiel isn’t as concrete as many think it is.  While Whigs were more anti-slavery than the Democrats, that had more to do with regional appeal (having more of a base in the industrial bastions of the North vs. the agrarian South) than it did with actual political philosophy of the parties.  And even then, the extent to which Whigs were actually more anti-slavery than the Democrats is a lot less than many people now days think it was.  In fact, in the South the owners of the massive plantations preferred the Whig Party over the Democrats, whom they viewed as too populist for their own good.  In the North, some anti-slavery advocates preferred the egalitarian democratic views of the Democratic Party over that of the elitist Whigs.  Again, like the Federalists vs. the DRs, class played a lot in how somebody voted back then.  Sure, this is more of a general observation than one related to New England, but this lazy man’s argument needed to be addressed first.
Later on, most anti-slavery politicians (Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers) coalesced into the Republican Party, which was just as much of a successor to the spirit of Jacksonian democracy and even agrarianism (do you seriously think the Whigs would've supported the Homestead Acts, lol?) as it was to the economically nationalist mantra of the Federalists and Whigs.
The divide on slavery between Democratic Republicans and Federalists was more telling, but again that had to do with the regional divide (DRs started out having strength in the “west” and “south” regions before expanding to the Mid-Atlantic and parts of rural New England while the Feddies were mostly contained to their little corner in New England) than party ideology.

2. Contrary to popular thought on this forum and other places, the conservative (emphasis) political elites were far from the free thinking liberals they are thought of:
First, a Historically Inconvenient Map!

Take a good look at this map, it correlates well with what I'm about to say.  An important note to be made: Massachusetts and Rhode Island both had some of the strictest voting qualification laws as late as 1860.  Just a few years before their Congressmen overwhelmingly supported the passage of the 15th Amendment.  Fascinating.

While there is truth to what Yankee and other say about the established “conservatism” of New England manufacturers and economic interests, we should acknowledge that there was quite a fiery populist element in the region.  Of course, the conservative interest remained dominant because of a combination of anti-suffrage forces that worked to keep power strictly limited to the elite state legislatures and the upper classes.  In the upper New England states populism was much easier to spread and gain a successful electoral consensus than in the lower parts of the region like Massachusetts and Rhode Island where landed and aristocratic interests reigned supreme.  Generally, the early Democratic Republicans in the region consisted of immigrants, “dissenting” Protestants, Catholics, millworkers, fishermen, etc. etc.  Basically small interests and disadvantaged (at the time) minorities in the region.  And contrary to dumb history, these interests were more concerned with reversing the discriminatory taxes that kept them in poverty and gain the right to vote, not because they loved slavery.  As time went on, they split into Democratic and Free Soil camps.  The conservative elites, naturally, supported laws that kept these minorities disenfranchised and removed from political power.
So yes, there was a strong liberal tradition in New England that went back to the days of Shay's Rebellion, which was used as fetish fuel by that era's conservatives to push for a stronger central government and a Constitution.  Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon, an immigrant from Ireland who was jailed under the Alien and Sedition Acts, was also an early New England liberal noted for his physical confrontation with a Connecticut Federalist over those very same laws.  Lyons would later be released from prison once the laws were overturned by Jefferson.  So yes, there was an element of liberalism in New England (hell, a good deal of the anti-slavery movement was by populists (which was a hodge podge of everyone from that era’s equivalent of social conservative to anti-racist liberals) who would later form the Free Soil Party and then later the Republican Party, whom the elite interest only later took advantage of for electoral success) that was fought tooth and nail by conservatives who sought to prevent them from having a voice or any power.
Like I alluded to before, the elites of New England had very little interest in allowing “the people” the right to a vote.  National Republican/Whig opposition to universal white suffrage had more to do with good old timey classism, ie “only producers should have the right to a vote” than it did with opposing racism, as some idiots have suggested elsewhere.  Whig support of universal voting rights, regardless of race, only came later after they were on the losing side of battles like the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island, and even then they settled for instituting a poll tax to dissuade the unlanded poor from voting.
Really, and some of you may not like this, there is a natural link to make between the plutocratic policies supported and enforced by New England aristocrats of the early 19th century with those later supported by the Jim Crow regimes of the South.  Now, I will concede that the elitist rule of New England upper class WASPs was certainly a lot less violent than the Dixie overlords, but as you will see later on in this chapter it was by no means missing.

3. It was called New England for a reason: Demographically it was overwhelmingly Anglo Protestant until the mid 19th century: This is a pretty vital piece of information that tends to go over a lot of people’s heads.  The early New England was by far probably the most monolithically Anglo region in the American colonies.  If this Wikipedia article’s link is accurate and legit, the state of Massachusetts, in particular, was almost 95% English in 1795!  Of course it is important to keep into consideration the history of the Bay Colony and New England, as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and a considerable part of Connecticut were part of the original English settlements in America.  Unlike the mid-Atlantic colonies, which had a long history of settlement by the Swedish, the Dutch, some German, and other non-Anglo groups, the colonies of New England had relatively little diversity compared to its neighbors.  Sure, there were considerable French populations in Upper New England, but it wasn’t until immigration picked up in the 19th century (largely Irish and German immigrants, which I will comment at length on later).  I am noting this now for a few reasons, 1) the demographics of New England have greatly changed since then, 2) this does have a significant impact on political development, 3) and yeah, the cultures are significantly different.
This is a very relevant point to be made, given some of the reactionary movements by New Englanders against immigrants and non-protestant groups.

Due to the length of the rest of the entry I've had to split it up into two parts.  Part II should be up in about thirty minutes, pending revisions and hyperlinks.

[Mechaman]

Part II of Part IV: The Controversy Begins!



4. Not only were the New England WASPs not “anti-racist freedom fighters”, their entire society was founded upon the idea of religiously justified wars of extermination against people they considered “Amalekites” as well as praise for plagues and famine that wiped out "savages".  A far cry from the lazy man’s history of the bleedingheart anti-racist liberal that pops in everybody’s head:
Wait, what is this story of these “Amalekites?”
Glad you asked!  The Amalekites were these people who attacked Moses and the Jews on their flight from Egypt in the book of Exodus in the Bible.  Supposedly, these “Amalekites” were the descendants of a Semite named “Amalek” who was once a kinsman of the Israelites.  The attack on the Israelites as they fled from Egypt was therefore seen as more than an attack, but of an abominable betrayal that made the Lord angry enough to swear the Amalekites to genocide by a later generation of Israelites.  That prophecy would (kind of) come to pass in 1 Samuel, when King Saul would wage a destructive war on the nation of Amalek, but it's dubious as to how far his war of genocide went against the Amalekites.  Saul’s disobedience of God, which can be interpreted as both reluctance and greed, earned him God’s disapproval to the point that the Lord had come to Samuel, telling him to a) Kill the King of Amalek, and b) appoint a new King (David).
What does this have to do with New England society you ask?  Oh, many things.  First, the story of Amalek had a strong influence on the infant Anglo Protestant understanding of organizations like the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Native Americans.  Some colonists even believed that the Native Americans were the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel", or those Israelites who had been exiled by the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC after conquest.  The Church, in their view, had become an instrument and organization of Satan, a group of traitors who had come to destroy and subvert the message of God and of Jesus.  Therefore, they had copied the sins of Amalek, and were to be subject to severe discrimination up to and including death.  Those that hesitated in the persecution and trial of the “Amaleks” were to answer for their sins and hesitancy before their Maker and other “true believers”.
In other words, the Puritan culture the dominated the region believed in perpetuating anything up to religiously motivated genocide to fulfill their goals.  Admittedly, such staunch and fundamentalist mentalities weren't all bad, as the strongly fundamentalist New Englanders helped lead the fight to abolish slavery.  At the same time though, we do a historical disservice without mentioning the quite negative results of this mentality, namely the genocide of Native American tribes, open and proud bigotry against the Celts, discrimination against Catholics and Jews, and other not so nice things.
Though to be fair, the Southern colonies had their fair share of the above crimes as well, using much the same "Amalekite" reasoning as their northern brethren did.
Point isn’t that the New Englanders had a profound capacity for hypocrisy (though they most certainly did, as I will touch on later), but that this idea that they were from a society of supreme openmindedness and good humanity is an absurdity.  Really though, the problem seems to be more of the kind of bigotry that was taught and practiced by the Anglos of New England was a more subtle version than the one taught and practiced by the slaveholders of the South.  As long as people behaved “civilized”, the Yankee WASP had no problem with them.  There is a strong parallel that needs to be made with that of the Roman and British Empires, in that the New Englander was more of a “Cultural Bigot” than he was a “Racialist”, though in the case of anti-Celtic bigotry the New England WASP proved exceptionally adept at both and not as near as subtle, given the violent and loud support the Know Nothing movement got in the 1850s.
The amount of knowledge that has been whitewashed on the subject of anti-Celtic bigotry in American History has motivated the writer that it deserves its own lengthy entry sometime in the future (and of course I admit as much bias in that regard as a Jew who wants to enlighten others on the Holocaust and a Native American that wants to teach others about the Indian Removal Act).  I will say though, in this part of the New England entry, that there was no region in the US that excelled more at anti-Hibernian bigotry than the freedom fighting anti-slavery northeast corner of the young nation where the proud Yankees hailed.  The so-called “American Party” (ie the Know Nothings) had by far their best performance in dye-in-the-wool anti-slavery Massachusetts, where they won all the Congressional seats and all but three seats in the state legislature and won the Governor’s seat by a landslide in 1854 running on outright anti-Irish racism.  Many devout anti-slavery advocates, rather than look for a respectable third party, decided to briefly join and back the American Party, because while they shed tears over the suffering of blacks in the South, they apparently didn’t give a damn about the hundreds of years of hatred, oppression, and subhuman status that their enlightened liberal English ancestors bestowed upon the Irish.  The elected Governor, Henry Gardner, even went as far as to sign legislation that banned the ownership of firearms by Irish militiamen and deported many immigrants, including an unemployed mother back to Liverpool.  While that was about all Gardner and other Governors could get away with, I should mention that the Know Nothing agenda included everything from forbidding Catholics, Jews and other non-protestants from holding public office (a view that was already enforced in several New England states and perhaps the only political crusade that Franklin Pierce was on the right side of), to requiring immigrants to wait 24 years to become citizens, to supporting registration and literacy laws that reeked of proto-Nazism.  Okay, maybe comparison to the Nazis is excessive, since the Know Nothings were nowhere as near as successful, but the point stands.  While the Know Nothings proved too divisive even for the hypocritical Yankees, the region still maintained its status as the loud and proud anti-Irish center of the country, effectively blacklisting many Irish from reaching the middle and upper classes by keeping WASP dominated industries like banking, higher education, and the courts out of the reach of the Irish and other ethnic minorities while they rapidly climbed the ladder in practically every other region of the country (except for some Jim Crow regime states, namely Virginia where the Irish weren’t even considered “white”).
Which isn’t to at all imply that New England was only hostile towards the Irish, of course.  German, Italian, Polish, and other significant non-protestant immigrant groups got a raw nasty deal from the morally righteous Protestant elites.  I, being one with strong socialist sympathies, will even go as far to state that I believe that the wars the Robber Baron elites waged on organized labor was at least in part motivated by an ages long bigotry against those they considered of “low birth”.  There are, after all, no privileged people in strikes.  If I recall correctly, Harvard and other Ivy League schools even had anti-Jew quotas well into the mid-20th century.
Point is, New England WASPs were quite adept at damning racial bigotry, unless it was their own.  A very natural comparison can be made with that of upper class white “liberals”, who see nothing hypocritical at all about damning poor white Appalachians while also loudly bemoaning anti-black and anti-Hispanic racism.  The WASP elites loudly and proudly opposed the economic advancement of the poor and huddled masses of Europe while crying loudly for racial equality, a truly hilarious example of moral hypocrisy that is left untold by many.

[Mechaman]

5. And yes, they were quite socially conservative: I would even go as far to say, as much as I don’t like saying it, that a lot of anti-slavery advocates were actually pretty socially conservative.  I know this sounds controversial to some, and I should note that I’m not saying that the socially liberal position was to support slavery (hell many of the anti-slave advocates of the 1850s were outright Marxists who were otherwise okay with crazy non-conservative things like free love and drug usage), but that it wasn’t rare at all that a lot of anti-slave advocates were holy rollers motivated by religious fundamentalism to oppose slavery, and other “evil vices”.  The link between religiousity and social conservatism is a long and storied one, many of the New Englanders fit that to a T.  As alluded to in the story of Amalek, many Yank settlers viewed themselves as on a quest from God to purify and strengthen the human race by waging wars against sinful vices and other evils.  New England Protestantism has a very long and storied history as a religious society that was obsessed with moral, social, and religious regulation.  It was not, I repeat it WAS NOT as socially permissive in spirit as “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” Rockefellerians want us to believe.  Of course, I am willing to concede that what exactly the 19th century Yanks considered “moral” might be different than say what a late 20th century Southern Evangelical Protestant thinks is “moral”, but I think it would take quite a stretch of the imagination to suggest that the moralistic WASP of the 19th century would’ve been just dying to endorse gay marriage, marijuana legalization, or even concepts like “no fault divorces”.  These were the people who actively campaigned for the illegalization of prostitution and alcohol, I doubt that they were exactly the agents of tolerance (unless it was drinking) that is imagined by people now days.
I mean, these people burned witches at one point, for fInks sake!

[Mechaman]

One of the sources of this confusion on that regard I think is partially the presumption that the Unitarians was 1) much larger than they really were and 2) more liberal earlier than they actually were. Aside from doctrinal differences and slighly less conservative tone then the dominant Calvinistic Congregationalism they had broken off from, they were rather much in line on most issues. It was not until the mid 19th century that Unitarians began to dive to left in an appreciable sense. Even then the bulk of the Congregationalist churches were decidedly on the right well into the 20th Century. Rural New England didn't move to the left until the mid to late part of the 20th Century.

Would you agree that this religious based conservatism as well as the nativist sentiments whipped up by these WASP elites, served to reduce that "fiery populist" sentiment you mentioned earlier that was directed previous at those elites?

Very much so.

A lot of the revolutionaries, like John Adams and John Jay, were very much concerned about the social of libertinism that had emerged in the colonies during the early years of the colonies.  According to a book I am reading right now, it was considered societally acceptable for most people in the lower class to have multiple sex partners and even engage in same sex relations, often times with members of other races.  Alcohol consumption and drunkedness were at rates that would make Adam FitzGerald commit suicide if he saw it.  Arguably, radicals like John Hancock and Samuel Adams were on the more liberal side of the Massachusetts coin, as you can tell by their stands against the British troops in the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party.  Hancock, as Governor of Massachusetts, hardly enforced tax and levy collection duties on veterans and supported the expansion of popular suffrage.
Democracy was seen, and this will sound odd given what you have just read, by some of the founders as a way for the people to "self-regulate" themselves and their behavior.  In the view of some of the early Founders, "Monarchy leads to extravaganza and immoral decline" or something to that effect.  In a way, by giving self-governance to the Puritanical elites in the Bay Colony and other areas, they were giving the religious leaders more umph in fighting the "immoral scourge" which had become so pervasive during the early colonial years.
The promotion of social conservatism, through legislative act as well as religious movements, sought to discourage the "immoral impulses" of the lower classes, if you will.  "Freedom" wasn't considered an end to be pursued by many, as the early colonial period had proven with it's widespread debauchery that too much "Freedom" was not a good thing.  Pirate culture of the time was pretty much a proto-gay liberation culture and crossdressers and transvestites  walked amok the docks of early American cities.  Women's lib occurred two hundred years earlier than it was originally thought, as a good portion of the tavern owners in Philadelphia and other areas were owned by women.  Taverns and other places of drink were popular meeting spots for radicals.  It should be noted that it was "drunken riff raff" that goaded the British soldiers into the Boston Massacre, not upstanding individuals of society who were just fed up with being bullied and were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Men like John Hancock and Samuel Adams (quite fitting) were heroes of these members of low class society.  The Boston Tea Partiers, after all, partied around in Native American garb while throwing the tea into the harbor.  On the other side of the coin, Founders like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were quite alarmed at the presence of moral debauchery in American society, with Adams even arguing that it posed a more pressing danger than the British troops that were stationed in the Colonies.  The promotion of socially conservative values in New England society as a way to a more perfect self and an ideal society was used as a counter to the extreme "freedom" and "liberty" advocated with the liberals of the region. It was a given that the lower classes were prone to immoral behaviors and excesses, thus religious conservatism was emphasized as a way to "perfect" the poor and defend the interests of the elite (which was a prosperous commerce, among other things) from being harmed by the fiery populism inherent in the region.

The views of many of the poor and even merchant classes were pretty radical.  Obviously the best way to restrain such views would be to actually convince some of the poor and merchant classes that other poors and merchants were quite radical.  It really helped that a lot of the "fiery populists" were also left wing Fenian Nationalists, whose ideology was considered practically socialistic (though to be fair, it pretty much was, especially with the bits about abolishing the landed interests) to many God fearing protestants.
In an English dominated society, there was nothing more radical than Irishmen who advocated the destruction of the landed elites and political rights for commoners.  Arguably, this was an actual fear of the elites, given that hundreds of years of social conditioning had taught them that the Celts, if left unrestrained and given enough freedom, would bring anarchy and ruin upon society.  This mentality of the Celts as a radical race went beyond British history to the time of the Greeks and Romans, who gave record of the ancient Irish as a violent race that cannibalized their dead fathers and openly fornicated with their sisters and mothers.
Of course this is highly ironic, given that many Irishmen in 19th century America didn't even oppose slavery, which they considered a necessary institution to keep what little economic position they had in society.  But of course, I would argue that their allegiance with slavers was the inevitable result of the elites enforcing the societal structure that kept many of them stuck in the lower classes.  There is no better way to stir up and create class antagonism, or outright racism, than pitting groups against each other with the desperation of survival over their heads.
This is what many softcore "liberals" who don't have a fundamental understanding of class warfare in America as well as some Republican hacks don't understand about white ethnic racism against blacks.  Many of the elites who condemned such racism and bigotry were indirectly responsible for it's existence and as such responsible for creating their own enemies.
Know Nothing nativism, in a way, was an attempt to use populism against itself.  Claiming to be "defenders of religious liberty" among other things, the Know Nothings tried combining a wide range of populistic appeals (including opposition to slavery, support of women's rights, protesting Dred Scott, and other progressive issues) with attacking the immigrant masses as tools of the Roman Catholic Pope who was the enemy of Protestant Liberty.  Combining that with the standard faire attack of the Irish as a race of drunkards prone to anarchy, violence, and corruption helped the Know Nothings achieve a measure of populist appeal among moralistic protestants and other moral crusaders who were alarmed by the high rates of crime, disease, poverty, illiteracy, and other signs of social failure in heavily immigrant areas.
In short, they tried to craft a message that portrayed Catholic immigration, especially Irish Catholic immigration, as a grave threat to American liberty and the continuation of American Capitalism.  That many of the new immigrants threatened the jobs of many lower class protestants also helped the Know Nothings gain support among groups that their National Republican and Whig predecessors had kept unenfranchised.  By making the Fenian radical an undesirable of society the Know Nothings (and the elite WASPs who joined their party) sought to preserve the conservative society that was under threat by expanded suffrage and other democratic ideals.

I know this is a controversial point, but the WASP feared the Irish because they thought the Irishman was a natural revolutionary socialist or other far left radical. . . . not because they believed he was a bible thumping socon who loved Wall Street (though to be fair many of the lace curtain class did have significant business sympathies, as you can see from the alliance between many political machines and business interests) like has been suggested or implied by some. . . . . not so wise people.
Just so I'm clear, I'm arguing that the average Irish American in the 19th century was left winged, not anti-racist (which a lot of you seem to assume is meant by "left vs. right" and not, you know, questions of economic justice, labor rights, child labor, yada yada).  Naturally, given their politics (strongly influenced by events that happened back in the Old Country) as well as their historic position opposed to the establishment of Yankee Capital, they would end up forming a large portion of the Democratic Parties in New England states.  Along with the Italians, the Jews, the Poles, and other blue collar immigrant groups they formed the "Left" of New England politics.  Arguably, the modern political alignment of New England is testament to the success of that coalition over the native Brahmin capitalists who originally settled the region (after killing a few thousand Indians, I digress).

[Mechaman]

One of the sources of this confusion on that regard I think is partially the presumption that the Unitarians was 1) much larger than they really were and 2) more liberal earlier than they actually were. Aside from doctrinal differences and slighly less conservative tone then the dominant Calvinistic Congregationalism they had broken off from, they were rather much in line on most issues. It was not until the mid 19th century that Unitarians began to dive to left in an appreciable sense. Even then the bulk of the Congregationalist churches were decidedly on the right well into the 20th Century. Rural New England didn't move to the left until the mid to late part of the 20th Century.

Would you agree that this religious based conservatism as well as the nativist sentiments whipped up by these WASP elites, served to reduce that "fiery populist" sentiment you mentioned earlier that was directed previous at those elites?

Very much so.

A lot of the revolutionaries, like John Adams and John Jay, were very much concerned about the social of libertinism that had emerged in the colonies during the early years of the colonies.  According to a book I am reading right now, it was considered societally acceptable for most people in the lower class to have multiple sex partners and even engage in same sex relations, often times with members of other races.  Alcohol consumption and drunkedness were at rates that would make Adam FitzGerald commit suicide if he saw it.

What book are you reading Mechaman? I'd like to read it.

First, sorry for the delay.  Been in other parts of the forum and this thread was overshadowed by other threads, haha.

Here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/Renegade-History-United-States/dp/1416576134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403473586&sr=1-1&keywords=a+renegade+history+of+the+united+states

TNF ran into it randomly one day and said it looked interesting.  So I checked it out on my Kindle.  Right now I'm on a pretty controversial part of the book that says that slaves actually had fun and had a more leisurely life than white workers.  THey do clarify they aren't justifying slavery, but it is a very interesting take on it.

They also do emphasize the more socially conservative aspects of the anti-slavery movement, to the chagrin of social marxists like myself.

[Mechaman]

UPDATE:

Just in case anyone wants to know how I'm doing this it is not chronologically.  As topics of interest come up I address them.  While I do admit bias in my interpretations, I'll continue to defend them based off of things that actually happened.  Mostly, this thread exists to counter common assumptions that people have in general about American history that just don't match up.

-Mechaman

[Mechaman]

Next Update: Understanding the Progressive Movement

[Mechaman]

Sorry for the delays.

If I get banned before I can post on here I'll relay my thoughts via Dallasfan or Cathcon.  But the update will happen.

[Mechaman]

Next Update: Understanding the Progressive Movement

Oh, I really can't wait for this!  Say what you want about politics, and I don't care where you fall on the spectrum ... the idea that "conservative" ALWAYS means favoring traditional policies/opposing change and "progressive" always means advancing society forward/abolishing age-old intolerance is disgustingly story-book and doesn't jive with history.  The progressive movement of the early Twentieth Century, for example, had more than its fair share of racist thought.

What do you think the terms "conservative" and "progressive", in the sense of a dichotomy, mean, then?

And Mechaman won't be writing in the sense of a dichotomy, FYI (to my knowledge). Rather, he'll likely pose that progressivism was merely a softer and more proactive form of conservatism designed to curb more radical movements. And for Mechaman, paternalism is a big part of the right. Thus, racist progressives in his eyes will be no better than out-and-out conservatives in their placement on any sort of political matrix.

Just my guess, anyway. If Mech feels any impetus to post here again, he's free to contradict my musings.

Yeah pretty much, though I would argue that the term would later be distorted beyond it's original meaning by some liberals who adopted the term as a means to advance social welfare.

More on that later.  Later hopefully being before the hammer falls down on me.