Civilization #52: Empire of Democracy

The British colonists in North America demonstrated remarkable diversity in religious, economic, and political motivations from the earliest settlements, illustrating how pluralism became foundational to American identity. The Massachusetts Bay Company brought Puritan families seeking religious freedom and establishing literacy-based communities. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a Quaker haven promoting religious tolerance, attracting German settlers. Lord Baltimore established Maryland as a Catholic refuge. These diverse colonies showed distinctive economic patterns, with northern colonies focusing on mercantile trade while southern colonies developed plantation agriculture using African slave labor. Each colony operated with substantial autonomy from the British crown due to England’s civil conflicts, allowing colonists to develop self-governing practices and independent political cultures that would later resist imperial control.

Colonial Americans demonstrated exceptional per capita wealth compared to their British counterparts, illustrating how Protestant work ethic and economic freedom generated prosperity despite being a colonial periphery. Benjamin Franklin exemplified this American mentality, rising from poverty through tenacity, hard work, and optimism to become a wealthy merchant, inventor, philosopher, and statesman. Franklin pioneered the self-improvement movement through his autobiography, establishing the distinctly American belief that individual effort determines success regardless of birth status. Americans worked harder and more productively than British citizens, showing how Enlightenment principles combined with frontier opportunities created unprecedented social mobility. This American attitude toward work and self-advancement produced higher living standards than the industrializing British metropole.

American colonists came into conflict with the British crown demonstrating how autonomy, prosperity, and Enlightenment principles created irreconcilable tensions with imperial mercantilism. Three major grievances drove rebellion: the Proclamation of 1763 restricting westward expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains frustrated land-hungry settlers; British attempts to impose taxes for colonial defense after the French and Indian War violated the principle of no taxation without representation; mercantile trade restrictions limiting commerce to British territories constrained economic freedom. The colonists, accustomed to high autonomy during English civil conflicts and paying fifty times less taxes than British subjects, resented increased imperial control. These educated, prosperous, and politically conscious colonists viewed British policies as tyrannical violations of their rights.

Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence demonstrating how Enlightenment philosophy provided revolutionary justification by asserting universal natural rights. Jefferson copied John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government nearly word-for-word, proclaiming that all men are created equal with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (Locke’s property). Governments derive legitimacy from consent of the governed to protect these God-given rights, and when governments become destructive of these ends, people possess both the right and responsibility to abolish them and institute new governance. This philosophical framework transformed the conflict from mere tax dispute into fundamental human rights struggle, establishing America’s founding purpose as protecting individual liberty against governmental tyranny.

George Washington established American republican virtue by demonstrating how voluntary relinquishment of power prevents tyranny, illustrating that liberty requires leaders who restrain ambition for public good. As commanding general during independence, Washington could have become king with army support, but instead resigned his commission and returned to farming at Mount Vernon after victory. This unprecedented act of voluntarily surrendering power convinced Americans that republican government could succeed without degenerating into dictatorship. Washington’s retirement proved that American revolution genuinely sought liberty rather than merely replacing one tyrant with another, establishing the cultural norm that power must be temporary and leaders must accept electoral defeat, making him the most revered founder despite battlefield victories owing more to French assistance.

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson represented competing American visions demonstrating how empire-building and democratic preservation create permanent tension in republican government. Hamilton envisioned America as destined empire requiring strong central government, national banking, industrial development, and active federal power to compete globally. Jefferson championed agrarian democracy, states’ rights, individual liberty, limited federal authority, and resistance to concentrated power threatening republican values. Hamilton’s financial system, national bank, and industrial policies established federal capacity for imperial expansion. Jefferson’s strict constitutionalism, agricultural focus, and democratic idealism prioritized liberty over power. This fundamental conflict between empire and democracy, centralization and decentralization, industrial power and agrarian virtue continues shaping American politics.

American territorial expansion demonstrated how demographic growth and ideological mission combined to create continental empire, illustrating that democracy could function as expansionist force. Population pressure forced colonists westward despite British restrictions, bringing conflict with Native Americans and other European powers. Americans pushed French, Spanish, Russians, and British from North America through combination of settlement, purchase, and warfare. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny asserted divine providence ordained American expansion from Atlantic to Pacific, spreading republican institutions and Protestant civilization. This demographic-ideological expansion transformed scattered coastal colonies into continental power, with population and economic growth continuously demanding new territories while religious and political ideology provided moral justification for dispossessing indigenous peoples and rival empires.

The Articles of Confederation demonstrated how excessive limitation of central authority prevents effective governance, illustrating that liberty requires sufficient power for collective action. Designed to prevent tyranny by restricting federal taxation, military authority, and interstate regulation, the Articles left the confederation unable to pay Revolutionary War debts, maintain armed forces, regulate commerce, or respond to crises like Shays’ Rebellion. Individual states pursued conflicting policies, erected trade barriers, and refused federal requisitions. Former Continental Army soldiers went unpaid, threatening revolt. This governmental weakness proved that protecting liberty required balancing power against anarchy, leading to Constitutional Convention creating stronger federal system under Hamilton’s influence while preserving Jeffersonian concern for rights through Bill of Rights.

The American Civil War tested whether democratic republics could endure demonstrating that preserving liberty sometimes requires violent struggle against internal contradictions. The conflict between free North and slave South represented incompatible visions of liberty and economic systems within single polity. Slavery contradicted Declaration’s assertion that all men are created equal, creating moral and constitutional crisis. Lincoln framed the war not as mere political dispute but as existential test of whether government of, by, and for the people could survive, making Confederate victory mean democracy’s failure. The war’s 600,000 deaths purchased national unification and slavery’s abolition, but at cost demonstrating that republican ideals sometimes require ultimate sacrifice to maintain.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address redefined American purpose demonstrating how rhetoric can transform national meaning, illustrating that political speech shapes collective identity. Lincoln reframed the Civil War from preserving the Union to testing whether democratic government could endure, making the conflict about universal human liberation rather than mere political dispute. He traced American founding to Declaration’s equality principle rather than Constitution’s compromise with slavery, asserting the nation was “conceived in liberty” dedicated to proposition that all men are created equal. Lincoln transformed soldiers’ deaths from tragedy into sacred sacrifice for new birth of freedom, making continuation of democratic experiment a divine mission requiring global expansion of liberty to honor the dead.

America’s post-Civil War industrialization demonstrated how national unification, continental resources, and immigrant labor combined to create economic superpower, illustrating that democracy could generate industrial might. The war’s conclusion unified the national market, eliminated slavery’s economic inefficiency, and established federal supremacy enabling coordinated development. Transcontinental railroads linked resources to factories, vast territories provided materials and markets, and mass immigration supplied labor for industrial expansion. Steel, oil, textiles, and manufacturing transformed America from agricultural republic to industrial giant surpassing Britain. This economic explosion vindicated Hamilton’s vision of industrial empire while raising questions about whether democratic values could survive corporate concentration and labor exploitation.

American imperial expansion from 1898-1920 demonstrated how democracy could function as expansionist empire, illustrating that republican institutions didn’t prevent territorial acquisition. The Spanish-American War of 1898 made America imperial power controlling Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Alaska’s purchase from Russia in 1867, Hawaii’s annexation, and various Pacific islands gave America global reach. World War I intervention demonstrated willingness to project power globally to make world “safe for democracy.” This transformation from isolated republic to world power vindicated Hamilton’s imperial vision while creating tension with Jeffersonian anti-imperialism, as democratic republic now ruled foreign territories without representation.

America’s World War I and II interventions established global hegemony demonstrating how democracy became dominant world system, illustrating that liberal values could triumph through military and economic power. World War I intervention tipped balance against Germany, making world “safe for democracy” through Wilson’s Fourteen Points promoting self-determination. World War II defeat of fascism established American-led liberal international order. The Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe under democratic capitalism, NATO provided security architecture, Bretton Woods system organized global economy around dollar. This transformation from isolated republic to global hegemon completed Lincoln’s vision of democracy spreading worldwide, though through power projection rather than just moral example.

The concept of “Empire of Democracy” demonstrated how America reconciled contradictory principles demonstrating that power and liberty aren’t mutually exclusive, illustrating Lincoln’s synthesis of Hamilton and Jefferson. America became global hegemon while maintaining domestic democracy, spreading liberal values through imperial means. This paradox enabled America to rule Philippines without representation while proclaiming universal human rights, to intervene globally while opposing colonialism, to maintain vast military while fearing standing armies. Democratic peace theory justified expansion as promoting freedom, while human rights rhetoric legitimized intervention. This unique combination of power and principle, empire and democracy, created historically unprecedented political formation.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America analyzed what makes American democracy function, demonstrating that social conditions rather than institutions primarily determine political outcomes. Visiting America for eight months in 1831, Tocqueville identified equality of conditions, voluntary associations, local self-governance, and religious vitality as foundations enabling democracy. He observed Americans’ unusual combination of individualism and civic participation, material prosperity and idealism, stability and dynamism. Tocqueville warned that democracy risked tyranny of majority, administrative despotism through centralization, and individualism destroying civic virtue. His analysis became most influential book about America precisely because foreign observer could perceive patterns invisible to natives.

Oscar Wilde’s quip that “America went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between” captured how American founding deliberately rejected European civilization’s hierarchies demonstrating that Enlightenment principles enabled alternative modernity. The Founding Fathers recognized civilization’s failings—aristocratic oppression, religious persecution, rigid class systems, imperial tyranny—and designed government based on Enlightenment principles to redeem humanity from these prejudices and atrocities. America’s “barbarism” meant frontier egalitarianism lacking aristocratic refinement; its “decadence” meant prosperity and individualism without cultivated high culture. This anti-civilization stance made America revolutionary force deliberately constructing society on rational principles rather than inherited tradition.

Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography pioneered the self-help movement demonstrating how American culture valorized individual self-transformation, illustrating that social position results from effort rather than birth. Franklin’s memoir established the template of rags-to-riches narrative where poor boy becomes wealthy through systematic self-discipline, continuous learning, and rational habit formation. He outlined specific techniques for self-improvement including virtue tracking, time management, and skill acquisition through deliberate practice. This launched distinctly American literary tradition continuing through Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, establishing self-help as bestselling genre. The movement reflected American belief that anyone could improve their condition through methodical effort.

Native American displacement demonstrated how democratic expansion required indigenous dispossession, illustrating that liberty for settlers meant subjugation for natives. North American tribes possessed freedom, military prowess, and physical superiority, making them formidable opponents to colonization. European diseases devastated populations, but survivors fought tenaciously against encroachment. American demographic growth continuously pushed westward into indigenous territories despite treaties and proclamations. Superior weapons technology, unlimited replacement settlers, and coordinated military campaigns eventually overcame native resistance. The contradiction between proclaiming universal human rights while genocidally dispossessing indigenous peoples revealed democracy’s dark underside where liberty for one group required oppression of another.

American slavery demonstrated democracy’s greatest contradiction showing how liberty and bondage coexisted, illustrating that universal rights rhetoric could mask systematic oppression. The Declaration’s assertion that all men are created equal occurred while Jefferson owned slaves, revealing foundational hypocrisy. Southern plantation economy depended on enslaved African labor producing cotton, tobacco, and rice for global markets. Slavery enabled white democratic participation by providing economic foundation allowing widespread property ownership and political equality among whites while completely excluding blacks. This racial slavery created pseudo-democracy where universal white male suffrage coexisted with absolute black subjugation, proving that democratic institutions don’t automatically extend rights to all humans.

Lincoln’s transformation of American purpose into spreading global liberty demonstrated how national mission could transcend narrow interests, illustrating that democracy requires ideological justification beyond material benefit. The Gettysburg Address redefined America’s existence as proving democratic government can endure, making preservation of the Union about humanity’s future rather than merely national interest. This mission consciousness evolved into global democracy promotion, with World War I fought to “make world safe for democracy,” Cold War opposing communist tyranny, and contemporary interventions justified by spreading freedom. The democratic peace theory asserting democracies don’t fight each other provided additional justification making expansion peacefully intentioned. This ideological mission paradoxically enabled empire-building justified as liberty-spreading.