In the 1940s and ’50s, Americans engaged in an intense debate over the content of school textbooks, particularly social studies texts. Fears of communism and socialism spurred a conservative backlash against anything that smacked of collectivism or unpatriotic criticism of the United States.^[1] Dangerous books were poisoning the minds of schoolchildren, turning them into Reds, and had to be removed from classrooms.^[2] Study of the controversy sparks an interesting question. How did contemporaries understand the relationship between citizenship and dissent? Could one remain a good citizen if engaging in critique of American society? The answers to this question diverged along political lines. Those who might answer no tended to be conservative, with the hypothetical yes associated with leftists. However, how most citizens — left, center, and right — felt remains open to interpretation.

Textbooks and series accused of “subversion” included American Government (Frank Magruder), Building America (National Education Association), and Man and His Changing Society (Harold Rugg).^[3] Alongside George Counts, William H. Kilpatrick, John Dewey, and others, Rugg was a social reconstructionist and progressive reformer who believed education could build a better society. Reconstructionists engaged in leftwing critiques of capitalism and other realities. Rugg’s widely used series included 1931’s An Introduction to Problems of American Culture. In the introduction, student attention was drawn to ideas like conflicting reports in newspapers, censorship, influence of environment and exposure on belief, job loss from automation, a rapidly changing society, poverty, who controls the government and the press, and more.^[4] Youth were asked to “study the needs and try to learn how to improve the community in which you live.”^[5] The book went on to explore the booms and busts of the capitalist economy and associated miseries: “even in times of prosperity millions are out of work.”^[6] “Why,” Rugg asks, “should there be unemployment and starvation in the richest country in the world?… There are many reasons, but the most important ones can be summed up in one phrase — LACK OF PLANNING.”^[7] The U.S. needed a “national plan of producing goods and providing jobs for all.”^[8] Rugg uses multiple chapters to lay out his vision, shifting from facts concerning the state of American society to unabashed editorializing of a flair ranging from New Dealist to socialistic. He advocates for public ownership of select industries, wealth redistribution, and other methods of State intervention to solve the “outstanding problems of American civilization and culture.”^[9] While he does not call for the nationalization of all industries, which would have placed him more firmly in the communist or socialist camp, Rugg nods approvingly at the Soviet Union’s centrally planned production, and in sections on politics is sure to include Socialists alongside Republicans and Democrats as potential candidates for elected office.^[10]

In a 1940 article in The New York Times, Rugg, perhaps feeling the pressure of a fierce attack on his books, vehemently denied that he was a communist or socialist, saying he supported “free discussion,” insisting education create “citizens who understand the forces at play in our own land and abroad, and who are concerned to do something about them. I feel sure that they can solve America’s problems and build a magnificent civilization…”^[11] This was key to making “the American way work.”^[12] A good citizen recognized national faults and worked to fix them. In the aforementioned textbook, Rugg connected his proposed right to a job with the American way. The Constitution vowed to “promote the general welfare” and the Declaration of Independence spoke of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — these are inalienable rights! What can guarantee them more securely than to provide a job for everyone?”^[13] George Shuster, president of Hunter College, wrote that Rugg’s textbooks pushed the idea that America has “changed and must necessarily go on changing…”^[14] Reform was an American tradition. Progressive education made “young people interested in helping to make their world a better world,” which of course required understanding (That Men May Understand was Rugg’s book-length response to critics) and acknowledgement of social issues — like “economic problems” that might be addressed by government intervention.^[15] Others agreed that introspection and criticism were healthy, such as a committee of school officials and citizens in Michigan that castigated textbook censorship, declaring, according to historian of education Jonathan Zimmerman, that “textbooks should examine ‘accomplishments and failures’ in American history, so that students would develop the analytical abilities that democratic citizenship demanded.”^[16] 

To critics, Rugg’s content represented “Treason in the Textbooks,” to quote the headline of a 1940 article by journalist O. K. Armstrong.^[17] Planning meant “strict government control of individual and group activities,” Armstrong wrote. Collectivism was the “bitter foe” of democracy, the birthmother of totalitarianism. The “insidious destruction of American ideals by way of the minds and hearts of American boys and girls” had to be stopped.^[18] For many conservatives, good citizenship required an uncritical, flattering approach to American society and history. Zimmerman writes, “In the white-hot politics of the Cold War, the suggestion that America needed any reform was ‘subversive’” to some observers, aiding the communists and their cause.^[19] Some California lawmakers explicitly called for “a constructive, positive approach” with a focus on the “good things” the United States had to offer.^[20] The American Legion, a veterans’ organization and a leading crusader against subversive textbooks, published “A School Program for Positive Americanism” in its magazine, written by the superintendent of Chicago’s public schools in 1941.^[21] “Sinister” ideas had to be purged from school materials and replaced with those that “inculcated” a “love of country” and a “loyal desire” to serve “the best interests of the community, State, and nation.”^[22] (Note the contradictory tension between opposing collectivism and stressing that the individual must put community and country first, a common feature of this period, alongside condemnations of indoctrination by those intent on utilizing it for different purposes.^[23]) The “teaching of patriotism” and “respect” for the American way of life was needed for “true American citizenship.”^[24] Students must study and celebrate American institutions, heroes, founding documents, flags, patriotic songs, and so on.

This approach of course was already a big part of public education. The Chicago superintendent reported proudly that his commissions were finding no subversive materials in his schools, which somewhat undermined the threat and framed education as already serving his function (“We have found no material that…seeks to cast doubt upon the importance of the patriotism of our American heroes and their services to mankind”).^[25] Indeed, widely used readers for young students produced in the 1930s featured patriotic songs, drawings of children carrying flags, and stories of dutiful and loyal Americans.^[26] Using possession to indicate importance and stress obedience, one basic reader explained that a citizen is a “person who lives in a country and belongs to it.”^[27] There were obligations of service in exchange for liberty. The United States “protects you and gives you many things to make you happy. But your country cannot be great and free and happy unless its boys and girls do their part,” do “what your country needs…”^[28] Another book left the value and benefit of machines unquestioned, quite different from the concern over automation leaving workers unemployed.^[29] Although it should be noted these texts were for younger readers than Rugg’s Problems. The point is that patriotic texts were a major presence in public schools, alongside those that addressed the pain of the Depression and other social ills.

Clearly, the meaning of good citizenship tended to differ by political ideology, with staunch conservatives far less likely to tolerate questioning and dissent as a component of citizenship compared to staunch left-wingers, who saw no contradiction. But perhaps these are the extremes — whether most Americans of the period saw proper citizenship as incompatible with criticism is debatable. On the one hand, Rugg’s books were wiped off the face of American education.^[30] Education historian Adam Laats notes that Rugg’s books sold 152,000 copies in 1940 but only 40,000 the next year, with many cities and school boards eliminating them.^[31] The conservative “attacks took their toll.”^[32] “Significant numbers of Americans” opposed subversive material and sought “to make schools and society more patriotic, more friendly to capitalism,” achieving real “success.”^[33] However, Jonathan Zimmerman argues that while Rugg’s books were largely defeated, conservative activism failed to topple most other accused texts.^[34] He writes that multitudes of citizens, veterans, school boards, businesses, and committees, as well as Congress and “almost every legislature” that took up the issue, refused to support content censorship.^[35] Despite widespread opposition to communism and support for patriotism, a distinction was made, Zimmerman suggests, between the former and much critical material.^[36] Perhaps a mix of nuanced thinking, disdain for censorship, fealty to familiar or beloved books, memories of the Depression, and other factors contributed. Laats suggests the Rugg controversy was more about the man than the books.^[37] Indeed, far-left teachers may have had it worse than texts.^[38] Zimmerman concludes: “By 1954, if not earlier, both the critics and the defenders of American textbooks declared that the campaign against the books had failed.”^[39] Given the inconsistency of textbook fates, historians must continue to study the period and its controversy, seeking new ways to measure general American sentiment.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

---

^[1] Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002). See chapter four.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Zimmerman, 83-84, and Adam Laats, The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2015), chapter three.

^[4] Harold Rugg, An Introduction to Problems of American Culture (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1931). See the introduction.

^[5] Ibid., 14.

^[6] Ibid., 181.

^[7] Ibid., 185.

^[8] Ibid., 195.

^[9] Ibid., 217, 594, 595-598.

^[10] Ibid., 3-4, 265, 596-597.

^[11] “Rugg Defends His Textbooks, Long Attacked,” New York Times, April 5, 1940.

^[12] Ibid.

^[13] Rugg, 196.

^[14] George Shuster, “Dr. Harold Rugg Replies to His Critics,” The New York Times Book Review, April 27, 1941.

^[15] Ibid.

^[16] Zimmerman, 95.

^[17] O. K. Armstrong, “Treason in the Textbooks,” The American Legion Magazine 29 (September 1940): 8-9, 51, 70-72.

^[18] Ibid., 72.

^[19] Zimmerman, 85.

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] William Johnson, “A School Program for Positive Americanism,” The American Legion Magazine 31 (September 1941): 12-13, 50-52.

^[22] Ibid., 12.

^[23] Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Your Child is Their Target,” The American Legion Magazine 52 (June 1952): 18.

^[24] Ibid., 13.

^[25] Ibid., 13.

^[26] “Little American Citizens,” William Elson and William Gray, Elson-Gray Basic Readers Book Four (Boston: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1936).

^[27] Ibid, 68.

^[28] Ibid.

^[29] “Workers and their Work,” William Elson and William Gray, Elson-Gray Basic Readers Book Five (Boston: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1936), 276, 306.

^[30] Zimmerman, 78-79.

^[31] Laats, 75.

^[32] Ibid., 75, 119-120.

^[33] Ibid., 76, 121.

^[34] Zimmerman, 79.

^[35] Zimmerman, 101-103.

^[36] Ibid., 101.

^[37] Laats, 121.

^[38] Zimmerman, 83.

^[39] Ibid., 101.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States government funded and created boarding schools to purge Native American children of their tribal identities and cultures.[1] Such children, through enticement or force, were transported hundreds or even thousands of miles from their reservations and deposited at institutions like the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the first of its kind (opened 1879). With the United States now spanning the continent, officials and advocates saw federal boarding schools as a method by which a rogue element within American borders – indigenous nations – could be eradicated, removed from their land, absorbed into mainstream society through re-education. The mission, write historian Jacqueline Fear-Segal and sociologist Susan Rose, was “to impose ‘civilization’ through total immersion” and “prepare Native youth for assimilation and American citizenship.”[2] While this was the intention, it can be argued that students generally did not learn to be “Americans” as defined by white visionaries, but did see value in the skills and knowledge attained at these institutions, highlighting a tension between utility or intellectual, technological growth and cultural preservation.

With Native American youth cleaved from their homes, families, and traditions, white educators implemented their curricula to “kill the Indian” and “save the man,” to quote Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle school, in 1892.[3] We know from Pratt’s writings that teaching English, industriousness, and self-sufficiency was highly important. This would cure Native Americans’ “chronic condition of helplessness” and enable them to live and work alongside whites.[4] His school sent youth “out into our communities,” Pratt explained, “to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or the colored.”[5] This is a reference to the “outing” program, which entailed sending students to work as farmhands, maids, and so on during the summers (children often did not go home for many years).[6] Students, Pratt declared, in “joining us and becoming part of the United States,” should also be made “loyal to the government… Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe and loyalty to the nation at large.”[7] “Teaching American citizenship” was crucial.[8] White customs, habits, and life purposes beyond nationalism and the world of work should likewise be inculcated. Pratt uses the terms “civilize” and “assimilate,” so necessary to end indigenous people’s (albeit environment-based, not innate) “savagery.”[9]

In 1890, the U.S. secretary of the interior handed down guidelines for indigenous boarding schools, stating Americanization required “training of the hand in useful industries; the development of the mind in independent and self-directing power of thought; the impartation of useful practical knowledge; the culture of the moral nature, and the formation of character.”[10] Students experienced a highly regimented environment — “military-style,” to quote Fear-Segal and Rose.[11] The secretary wrote that pupils should be forced to attend religious services and punished for using any language but English. “Grave violations of rules” resulted in “corporal punishment or imprisonment in the guardhouse.”[12] Donald Warren of Indiana University writes that the curriculum featured reading, writing, and speaking English, arithmetic, and U.S. history and government.[13] Schoolwork also included industrial training, farming, mechanics, housekeeping, singing, and mastery of instruments.[14] Proper personal care, hygiene, and dress (they wore uniforms) were important, as were manners and etiquette. “They should be taught the sports and games enjoyed by white youth,” the secretary continued, from baseball to marbles.[15] “The girls should be instructed in simple fancy work, knitting, netting, crocheting…”[16] Each boarding school was to display the American flag daily.

Primary sources left by Native Americans illuminate reactions, including what students rejected or took to heart. Zitkála-Šá of the Yankton Dakota, a student at Carlisle, wrote of “unjustifiable frights and punishments” and “extreme indignities” like having her hair shorn, being tied down, teachers striking students, and incomprehensible rules.[17] Originally excited to journey east to attend school, once there her “spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom,” and she “rebelled.”[18] She broke rules, ran and hid from teachers, did chores improperly, and tore frightening pictures of the devil in a Christian story book. When tuberculosis swept through Carlisle, Zitkála-Šá grew suspicious of both the quality of care sick youths received and the religious rites (“superstitious ideas”) pressed upon the dying.[19] To Zitkála-Šá, the strict routine of this “civilizing machine” was a “harness” causing “pain.”[20] She was “actively testing the chains which tightly bound my individuality.”[21] After three years, she returned home to South Dakota and felt lost, in “chaos,” being “neither a wild Indian nor a tame one” after her experience.[22] She wept seeing young people on the reservation wearing white America’s clothing and speaking English, and wanted to burn her mother’s bible.

Resistance to assimilation, despair over cultural erosion, and crises of identity were common among Native American youth who attended federal boarding schools. Fear-Segal and Rose write that “some found [Carlisle] traumatic and begged to go home or ran away; others completed their Carlisle schooling but lived with stress and disturbance upon their return.”[23] Only seven percent of students graduated from this school; most were discharged. “The vast majority did not assimilate into mainstream society,” the scholars write, but returned to their nations, often feeling as Zitkála-Šá did.[24] The researchers cite the example of Plenty Horses of the Sicangu Lakota — “When I returned to my people, I was an outcast among them. I was no longer an Indian. I was not a white man…” — but also note that indoctrination could work, at least for a time, as with Sun Elk from the Taos Pueblo: “After a while we also began to say Indians were bad. We laughed at our own people and their blankets and cooking pots and sacred societies and dances.”[25] Native American children could be made ashamed of who they were. Nevertheless, with most returning to reservations, and with accounts of resistance and “feeling caught between two cultures,” one can posit that students largely did not learn to be so-called true Americans, who would leave their reservations and integrate with white society.[26]

Yet students recognized the advantages of skills and experience they gained at boarding schools. There was much use value in certain knowledge and practices – which may have made some lifestyle changes feel less threatening to the larger culture. Despite her painful experiences, Zitkála-Šá wrote that after graduating, “I was the proud owner of my first diploma.”[27] She then went to college, against her mother’s wishes. Zitkála-Šá, then, both lamented cultural erosion or transformation and continued participating in its mechanisms. Perhaps there was a distinction between entering the white world to be educated in new ways (more acceptable) and bringing white ways of living, speaking, and thinking back to the reservation (less acceptable). But Zitkála-Šá’s mother may reveal a different tension. She is deeply suspicious of whites, with their “lies” and violent conquests, but is “influenced…to take a farther step from her native way of living” by replacing her wigwam with a log home.[28] Perhaps the difference was in fact that certain things added to indigenous life were generally more palatable (knowledge, diplomas, forms of shelter) than others. Individuals would of course have different views on what was agreeable, with a mother pushing a bible and a daughter wanting to burn it. There was, Donald Warren writes, little “agreement on the need to choose between tribal and white cultures” – some were more open to mixing than others – but there was “growing acknowledgement that learning English and preparing for employment in the U.S. economy banked useful assets…”[29] Some pursuits and practices from white society were judged to be sensible, or even matters of survival — Zitkála-Šá “will need an education when she is grown,” her mother mused when deciding about Carlisle, “for then there will be fewer real Dakotas, and many more palefaces.”[30] The gun may be the best example of a novelty too practical to ignore. Ohíye S’a of the Santee Dakota wrote of hating the idea of wearing white America’s clothing, but this was long after he started using a gun![31] Usefulness may have impacted the degree to which practices and technology were seen as threats to tradition.

Letters, alumni surveys, and other primary documents suggest other students saw utility in education at white institutions. Vincent Natalish became a civil engineer in New York, took courses at Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later sought to enroll his son at Carlisle.[32] Elizabeth Wind became a nurse in Wichita, Kansas, and also tried to send her boy to Carlisle.[33] Mary North, writing to the alumni association in 1912, praised “dear old Carlisle” which “taught us so many useful things [and] helped us so much in our living and working on our farm, which we love better than living any other place.”[34] Her family tried “to live like the good white people live.”[35] Martha Napawat reported to the school later in life that she wanted “to be a good example of Carlisle. You tell the white people that it does pay to educate the Indian… I am trying to keep a house like a white woman.”[36] “Great improvement in Indians” could be seen, for example the transition from teepees to houses.[37] Writings to school officials and former figures of power are open to questions of sincerity (did former students simply tell boarding schools what they wanted to hear?), but voluntarily sending one’s child to Carlisle is indicative of the perceived value of such an education, at minimum for survival in an increasingly white world, an idea scholars have touched upon.[38]

In sum, the experience of indigenous children in federal boarding schools was complex. Cultural erasure, oppression, trauma, resistance, interest in learning, and cultural adaptation all occurred together. Pratt’s mission to “release these people from their tribal relations,” “citizenizing and absorbing them” into the larger American society through education did not succeed. The most important thing students were to learn – that Native American societies had little value and should be abandoned – went largely unlearned. Still, white schools offered training and knowledge that students found useful and engaging; such learning was brought back to reservations, and to a lesser extent turned into careers beyond the reservations. Boarding schools, among much else, did change students and indigenous nations. The field should continue to refine its understanding of the degree of this change, and explore whether new ways of living were viewed with hostility in inverse correlation to utility, which could reveal a new layer of Native American agency.[39]

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

---

[1] Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Susan Rose, eds., Carlisle Indian Industrial School: Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016). See the introduction.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Richard Henry Pratt, Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 46–59. Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1973), 260–271. Online at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Fear-Segal and Rose, Carlisle.

[7] Pratt, Official Report.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Rules for Indian Schools,” U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1890 (Washington, D.C., 1890), cxlvi, cl-clii. In Sol Cohen, ed., Education in the United States: A Documentary History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1977), 3:1756.

[11] Fear-Segal and Rose, Carlisle.

[12] “Rules for Indian Schools,” 1759.

[13] Donald Warren, “American Indian Histories as Education History,” History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2014): 263. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24482179.

[14] “Rules for Indian Schools,” 1757-1760.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Zitkála-Šá, “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” American Indian Stories (Washington: Hayworth Publishing House, 1921), 47-80. Online at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/zitkala-sa/stories/school.html.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Fear-Segal and Rose, Carlisle.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Fear-Segal and Rose, Carlisle; Pratt, Official Report.

[27] Zitkála-Šá, “School Days.”

[28] Zitkála-Šá, “Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” American Indian Stories (Washington: Hayworth Publishing House, 1921), 7-45. Online at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/zitkala-sa/stories/impressions.html.  

[29] Warren, 269.

[30] Zitkála-Šá, “Impressions.”

[31] Ohíye S’a (Charles Eastman), Indian Boyhood (New York: McClure, Philips, and Co., 1902). Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/337/337-h/337-h.htm#link2H_4_0031. See chapter 12.

[32] Superintendent to Vincent Natalish, December 17, 1915, and Vincent Natalish to Oscar Tipps, December 14, 1915, in “Vincent Natalish (Nah-tail-eh) Student File,” Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, accessed March 1, 2024. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/student_files/vincent-natalish-nah-tail-eh-student-file. See pages 21-25 of the PDF.

[33] Superintendent to Mrs. Paul B. Diven, January 3, 1911, and Betty W. Diven to Moses Friedman, January 26, 1914, in “Elizabeth Wind (Ro-nea-we-ia) Student File,” Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, accessed March 1, 2024. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/student_files/elizabeth-wind-ro-nea-we-ia-student-file. See pages 10 and 17 of the PDF.

[34] Mary L. N. Tasso to Officers of the Alumni Association, February 1, 1912, in “Mary North Student File,” Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, accessed March 1, 2024. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/student_files/mary-north-student-file. See pages 10-11 of the PDF.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Mary Napawat Thomas Returned Student Survey, in “Mary Napawat Student File,” Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center, accessed March 1, 2024. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/student_files/martha-napawat-student-file. See pages 6-7 of the PDF.

[37] Ibid.

[38] For more on survival and education, see Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, “Culture, Place, and Power: Engaging the Histories and Possibilities of American Indian Education,” History of Education Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2014): 395–402. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24482187.

[39] Warren’s “confining binary” of “victims or agents” may be further eroded if perceived usefulness impacted decisions about encroaching white cultural elements. See Warren, 261.

We return with a second installment of Fascinating Moments in Early U.S. History. See the first article here.

When two Hamiltons argued you shouldn’t be punished for saying true things (plus, you should have the right to a jury)

We must rewind a little for this one. In the Peter Zenger trial of 1735, before the creation of the United States, Philadelphia attorney Andrew Hamilton argued that there needed to be a higher bar in British law to mark written speech as “seditious libel” — it should not solely stem from whether a public official’s reputation was damaged. Yes, you could get in trouble just for this! Zenger, a publisher, was charged with seditious libel after criticizing the royal governor of New York, who felt his reputation was impugned.

Hamilton argued that it mattered whether the statement was true or false, what the author’s intent was. “The Words themselves must be libelous,” Hamilton said in court, “that is, false, scandalous, and seditious or else we are not guilty.” A guilty verdict, he continued, would imply that the words Zenger published were false, when they were in fact “notoriously known to be true.” After reaffirming one’s right to criticize the government, Hamilton said that “it is Truth alone which can excuse or justify any Man for complaining of a bad Administration” but “nothing ought to excuse a Man who raises a false Charge…” If the law treated these things the same, then it was the “bare Printing and Publishing a Paper” that was libelous, the mere release of “Informations.” People deserved the right to print true things, even if someone’s reputation took a hit.

Hamilton further argued that juries, not judges, should decide whether something was libelous, not just who published it, saying that “leaving it to the Judgment of the Court, whether the Words are libelous or not, in Effect renders Juries useless.” Yes, in this era the judges decided what was libelous in a given case and the juries merely decided who printed it! Hamilton questioned why juries were neutered for this particular crime. “I cannot see, why in our Case the Jury have not at least as good a Right to say, whether our News Papers are a Libel, or no Libel as another Jury has to say, whether killing of a Man is Murder or Manslaughter…” Decisionmaking power had to be taken from the judge and distributed to the people of the jury, for the sake of liberty and proper trials.

In the end, Hamilton essentially asked the jury to engage in jury nullification — even though a judge found Zenger’s published materials to be seditious libel, and Zenger confessed to publishing them, the jury found Zenger not guilty of publication and set him free.

But the law went unchanged, so everything had to happen again later, after the American founding. In the Harry Croswell case of 1804 in New York, the well-known Alexander Hamilton drew on Andrew Hamilton’s arguments. When a jury found Croswell, another printer and journalist, guilty of publishing what a judge ruled to be seditious libel against President Jefferson and others, Alexander Hamilton showed during appeal that what had been written was true. Allowing truth to be published without punishment, regardless of reputational harm to the targeted politicians, was the only “way to preserve liberty, and bring down a tyrannical faction. If this right was not permitted to exist in vigor and in exercise, good men would become silent; corruption and tyranny would go on, step by step…” Of course, Hamilton added, it would not do to have “a press wholly without control” — those who published falsities should still face consequences.

Hamilton insisted that juries decide these cases, for the same reasons one would support political democracy. It spread out power. A “fluctuating body…selected by lot” was safer for liberty and justice than a “permanent body of magistrates” who were part of the governmental system, would be influenced by the opinions of politicians, and, though this is at best only implied, may even have personal incentives to keep seditious libel laws more extreme. After all, one could write against a judge as easily as a president or governor. Judges held positions of power, just like those being attacked in the papers. “Men are not to be implicitly trusted, in elevated stations,” Hamilton said. “The experience of mankind teaches us, that persons have often arrived at power by means of flattery and hypocrisy; but instead of continuing humble lovers of the people, have changed into their most deadly persecutors.” This line may have referred simply to politicians, but came directly after comments on judges. It cleverly justifies both free criticism in the press and removing decisionmaking power from judges. The court might “make a libel of any writing whatsoever” if the judicial system continued to, pace Andrew Hamilton in the 1730s, “render nugatory the function of the jury.” 

Alexander Hamilton also praised the infamous Sedition Act of 1798, a federal seditious libel law that had expired in 1801. While it allowed Americans to be charged for defaming public officials or making rebellious, critical statements against the government in D.C., what Madison and the Republicans labeled a serious betrayal of the First Amendment but the courts ruled constitutional, it also vested power in juries and allowed the truth as a defense. If you could prove what you said was true, you could be declared not guilty. Therefore Hamilton called the act “honorable, a worthy and glorious effort in favor of public liberty.” The noble principles of this federal law should thus be applied to New York state law.

The appellate judges deciding the case deadlocked; Croswell’s conviction stood. But in 1805, the New York legislature modified state seditious libel laws, building in the Hamiltons’ reforms.

When Napoleon’s defeat indirectly caused a depression in the United States

The Panic of 1819, a financial crisis that caused a massive economic downturn in the United States, was caused by myriad factors. But the fall of Napoleon and the recovery of Europe played a role. After the Napoleonic wars, Europe’s agricultural production increased and American farms had a more difficult time selling their goods. Prices fell, along with profits. Therefore farmers struggled to repay loans to financial institutions, which had been extending credit far and wide during the earlier economic boom. When farmers could not pay their debts, the banks responded by turning to institutions that owed them debts: smaller banks. Banks demanded that other banks repay their loans, which banks could not do due to the lack of payment from individual borrowers. Banks were under considerable strain without individual repayments and with their own debts being called up — the national banking system, for instance, was still trying to pay off the Louisiana Purchase. Financial institutions began to go under, which continued the cascade. Fearful of losing their money if their bank was the next to go, Americans rushed to make withdraws, cleaning out their banks and causing them to fail. The Panic was a significant event in early nineteenth-century America, putting an end to the Era of Good Feelings — a time of economic and imperial growth — and plunging the country into an economic depression that lasted several years.

When states bypassed the free market and supercharged the economy

In the early nineteenth century, Democrats at the state level were interested in using government to create more prosperous economies — “state mercantilism.” This was in contrast to the federal level, where Democrats alongside Republicans were largely for free markets, free trade, and other anti-mercantilist policies. One aspect of state mercantilism was large construction projects that would increase and quicken the flow of goods within the United States, creating more profits for businesses, farmers, shipping companies, and so forth. When federal funding for such projects (such as those proposed by Henry Clay) failed, as a result of the Democratic Congress believing such things to be unconstitutional for the national government to do, the states moved forward on their own.

One major state investment was in railroads. Maryland, pushed by business interests in Baltimore, chartered the first American railroad firm, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. The B&O went west from Baltimore to the Ohio River and later to St. Louis. To get railroad projects off the ground, states would give land to railroad companies, at times seizing it from residents using eminent domain. The companies would then construct the lines on free land and sell off parts of the land back to Americans and other businesses. In addition to offering such sizable subsidies, states allowed and supported monopolies — one rail company would own the line being constructed across a state. The rail companies enjoyed no competition, set high rates, and raked in the revenue. They also sold company shares. With state aid, major railroads snaked from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York out across the U.S. and toward the Mississippi.

Canals were another major state investment. If connections could be made between water systems, goods could reach their destinations faster, generating higher company profits. So states funded the construction of canals, for instance Pennsylvania connected the Susquehanna River with the Ohio. The Erie Canal is possibly the most well-known and most successful project, with New York state, funded by New York business interests, linking the Mohawk River to Lake Erie. Goods could travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes; the Erie Canal created a major trade network between the Middle Region of the U.S. and the Old Northwest. As with railroads, canal projects hugely benefited the economies of American states, as well as that of the nation as a whole.

When the Shawnee leader castigated dependence, cultural corruption, and racial mixing

In the early nineteenth century, Shawnee leader Tenskwatawa, “The Prophet,” asserted that whites had corrupted Native American societies. American and European goods and technology had replaced traditional practices and eroded self-sufficiency. “Our men forgot how to hunt without noisy guns. Our women don’t want to make fire without steel…” Indigenous people, Tenskwatawa declared, had become dependent on the enemy: “now a People who never had to beg for anything must beg for everything!” Native Americans had once been “pure” and “strong.” Now they were weak and defiled. Whiskey had consumed them, and women had married white men to create “half-breeds.” It was not enough to protect indigenous land from further white encroachment (which is in fact blamed on cultural exchange). Tribes had to return to the “old ways,” their cultures purified and people made strong again. The Prophet demanded Native women abandon white husbands and their children to preserve racial homogeneity, a rejection of alcohol and food introduced or produced by whites, and a return to traditional clothing, hunting, tools, and so on (although guns were too useful for self-defense against whites, and should be kept). Commerce and interaction would cease entirely. Society could then be sacred and self-sufficient once more, as willed by the Creator.

When Andrew Jackson framed Indian Removal as a good thing for Native Americans, a humanitarian act

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 seized Native American land in existing states east of the Mississippi and forcibly moved indigenous people westward into American territories. It was proposed by President Andrew Jackson and passed by his party, the Democrats. Tribes that were rounded up and marched into what would become Oklahoma and Kansas (usually worse land than what they were leaving) included the Seminoles, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Sac, and Fox. All this represented a serious American betrayal of its promises and treaty commitments, and a major crime against humanity. Native peoples had been told they could remain in their lands if they engaged in agriculture and in other ways adapted to American society. The forced marches, which came after plenty of violence, were a humanitarian disaster. Do you recall the infamous “Trail of Tears”? Native Americans perished from the cold and from starvation. The Indian Removal Act is therefore remembered by most as a devastating and immoral policy. But at the time, it was lifted up as a wonderful thing for Native Americans. This was necessary to national identity and self-perception.

The framing of these events is different today, because there is a stronger need to justify oppression when it’s taking place; two centuries later, the narrative can shift a bit. When you set about to crush someone, you justify what you are doing as morally right. So Jackson, in his December 6, 1830 speech to Congress, declared that removal “will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps” even help them become “civilized.” Expulsion from their homes was the best thing for Native Americans. African Americans received similar ideological treatment in the United States: slavery was good for blacks (who were too stupid and uncivilized to care for themselves), giving them shelter, food, clothing, Christianity, and so on. Oppressors have to rationalize, to frame their deeds as humanitarian, not destructive. The descendants of oppressors, looking at the past, judge things slightly differently. While you can still find some who try to stress the victim benefits of slavery or Indian Removal to protect the image and moral character of the United States, most Americans would probably call these things wrong, tragic, and so on. At the least, they were bad for Native Americans and others. That is a different framing than Jackson’s. 

However, the full modern framing is still problematic and has not left behind the nationalistic ideology of the 1820s and earlier. Americans may reflexively call the mistreatment of native nations wrong or harmful, but there are two large caveats to this, which impede any further distancing from Jackson. First, the wrongs of Indian Removal, slavery, and so on are likely to be considered “mistakes.” The ideological position remains that the United States — its presidents, government, and people — is fundamentally good. In the past mistakes were made, but America always had good intentions (highly Jacksonian). This is rather different than acknowledging the self-interest, greed, conscious betrayal, racism, cruelty, violence, and so on necessary to devise and carry out Indian Removal. The idea that the United States might have had bad intentions is unthinkable for many people. Messing up while still being inherently good is a more palatable, patriotic image than committing premeditated crimes as a result of being inherently flawed, and many cling to it. This may be changing as leftwing sentiments and criticism grow more popular, but it holds true.

The second asterisk is that while Indian Removal would likely be labeled wrong or hurtful by most Americans today, it may more have the flavor of a “necessary evil.” It is very difficult for citizens to imagine a United States that doesn’t look precisely as it does today. The U.S. was meant to have its present borders and power — Manifest Destiny is still very much alive. The Trail of Tears and indigenous expulsion may have been bad, but they had to happen for America to fully possess the lands east of the Mississippi. If explorers and colonists hadn’t beat back native populations, the U.S. may not have existed; if Americans hadn’t done the same, the U.S. would not have fulfilled its destiny. History had to unfold as it did, with all its awfulness, so the U.S. could grow larger, more powerful, and be the greatest nation in the world. It would be highly interesting to conduct a poll, inquiring whether one would prefer a smaller, less influential, less powerful United States that hadn’t conducted Indian Removal, slavery, or other acts…or prefer reality, to have everything play out as it did to ensure American continental and global dominance. Many would choose the latter, making one question how wrong such things are actually judged to be, and highlighting who and what really matters.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.