Alan Taylor's American Republics

Taylor, Alan. American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850. W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.

American Republics is the third entry in Alan Taylor's ongoing history of the United States (following American Colonies and American Revolutions). He uses the plural form of Republic because he argues that the United States was hardly a united front, with various ideas for what the nation should be. The most obvious divide was between free-soiler Northerners and pro-slavery Southerners. However many reformers, religious outliers, Abolitionists, and others further added to a dazzling array of variants on the American ideal. Many Americans, and Indian Peoples as well, even struck out to create their own independent republics (Mormons, Texans, and Cherokees are among the notable examples), though all eventually fell into the United States anyways. Taylor also shows how shaky the American Republic was in its early years. It struggled economically and was battered by established empires, foremost Britain's. Internal strife frequently led it to the brink of disunion as different geographic and political sections pursued differing agendas. The book ends with the Compromise of 1850, which did ward off Civil War, but also heightened tensions to the point that it caused one anyways ten years later.

Taylor also gets into the history of America's neighbors, such as Canada and Spanish Florida. These are among the strongest parts of the book, contextualizing America within a wider continental history (as the title promises), and providing some inroads into other countries' histories for more curious readers Another strength is the collection of various unique characters, many little known even to history buffs. In addition to well-known monumental figures ranging from Henry Clay to Frederick Douglass to Andrew Jackson, Taylor treats us to would-be republic founder William Bowles (77-80) to humanitarian slaveholder Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr. (150-155) to William and Ellen Craft, a slave couple who posed as male master and valet to escape to the North (374-375). This makes for an expansive and colorful collection of characters and stories within 400 highly readable pages. American Republics serves as a wonderful starting point to find topics to investigate.

However, Taylor seems to have been taken in by recent political and social trends, in an unfortunate way. He consistently hammers home the racist aspects of early America in what is supposed to be a more generalized history. He frequently accentuates bad and negative aspects of history with little to no good and positive aspects, or places all the atrocities on one side of a conflict. This creates a one-sided, miserable take on American history that veers dangerously close to Woke ideology. Taylor almost entirely ignores non-racial factors in America's development or subordinates it to the lens of white supremacy, often through generalized statements that ignore friction between Democrats and Whigs, Northerners and Southerners, etc. Here’s one that ignores the great disagreements over expanding slavery, and to a lesser extent whether the United States should continually expand and create conflict. “In 1842, vandals broke off an arm from Justice, which seemed symbolic in a Union committed to expanding slavery and crushing Indians.” (4)

Taylor also seems determined to portray historical figures in a good and evil manner. All non-whites are perpetual victims and their violence is glossed over, seen as an unfortunate response to white violence, or ignored. You won’t see anything about Indian atrocities (particularly on the part of the Commanches and other raiding cultures) or much on the unsavory aspects of 19^th Century Haiti and Latin America. Whites are generalized as rapacious, backstabbing, and murderous racists. He so unremittingly portrays them in this manner while ignoring any positive aspects that it can get a little cartoonish. Exceptions usually include early feminists and Abolitionists. He does have a positive view of John Quincy Adams and the much underappreciated Nicholas Trist (who stifled President James Polk's plans to extend the 1840s war with Mexico and seize even more territory).

It would be incorrect to say that Taylor fabricates America's historical sins. He is much too respectable a historian to do that. The United States (the government and/or land-hungry settlers) did indeed cheat, dispossess, and often slaughter Indians and also showed blatant hypocrisy by tolerating slavery and racism when its founding philosophy and documents called for liberty and equality. Taylor is also correct in presenting the Mexican War as a cynically perpetrated act to take territory and expand slavery, while also seeing the American military execute legitimate war crimes (see page 339 for an example). The horrible stories he includes did indeed happen, if not well balanced out by more uplifting figures and events or horrible actions on the part of the assigned good guys and/or victims.

Taylor's real issue is omission, such as when he explains how industrial capitalism “increased productivity [and profits] and cut labor costs” without bothering to explain that Americans also got to pay a lot less for what it produced (235). One can complain about how employers used labor while acknowledging there were some positive benefits and the author's overview of this topic seems to come out of Marxist-oriented historiography. Taylor frequently introduces characters by just their negative aspects, or removes incidents which might make them sympathetic even if we find their actions horrendous. Case in point is Andrew Jackson (106-107). Taylor correctly lists Jackson's foibles from his fiery temper to his especially cruel treatment of runaway slaves. Here's one paragraph with displays some choice use of words:

Jackson grew up in a violent place and time: the Waxhaws region of the South Carolina backcountry during the American Revolution, when Patriots waged a brutal civil war against Indians, Loyalists, and Britons. Taken prisoner as a boy of fourteen, Jackson enraged a British officer by refusing to clean his boots: a demeaning task ordinarily imposed on enslaved Blacks. Swinging his sword, the officer slashed the boy across the forehead, leaving a lifelong scar. Jackson told this story as the essence of his being: a white man who would accept neither restraint nor insult. As a young man, he learned to express, rather than restrain, his passions and the vindicate violence as just revenge. 

Notice that he lists one of the most brutal parts of the Revolutionary War as “a brutal civil war against Indians, Loyalists, and Britons” implying that the Patriots bore the greater responsibility for the atrocities. While one could say that by joining the Revolution they started this part of the war, the violence was sadly distributed equally among the various factions. On the topic of omission Taylor leaves out that Jackson and his brothers and mother were held in one of Britain’s hellish prison camps. His own siblings and mother died thanks to the horrible conditions, leaving him an orphan. Surely this would have something to do with cultivating his vengeful and violent life choices. Finally Taylor gives the story of the British officer and his shoes through a heavy racial lens, insisting that instead of merely showing defiance against an enemy leader, Jackson had racial beliefs on his mind.

Here’s another carefully worded, but less slanted, passage regarding the Texas Revolution (320):

In March, the troops captured and butchered small Texan garrisons at Goliad and the Alamo, the latter a former mission in San Antonio where Crockett and Travis died. Pressing on into East Texas in April, Santa Anna blundered into an ambush at San Jacinto, where Sam Houston routed the Mexicans, killing 630 (many of them after surrendering), and capturing another 700, including the dictator.

Note how Taylor somehow manages to downplay two military massacres. The Alamo saw 180-220 defenders fight almost to the death, with only a few being executed after surrendering. But at Goliad the Mexicans massacred about 400 prisoners. This is hardly a small number even when stacked against the 630 Mexicans at San Jacinto. Taylor obscures the numbers of Texans executed while making it a point to give us exactly how many Mexicans suffered the same fate later on. On a similar note Taylor shows a double standard when it comes to Nat Turner, the slave preacher who led one of the more notable slave revolts. Throughout the book he likes to bring up how settlers or militiamen slaughter women and children when going after Indians or defiant Blacks. When it comes to an event where black slaves slaughtered the women and children of their masters’ families (understandable in the context of how they were treated, but still cruel), Taylor simply writes “a messianic preacher, Nat Turner, led a midnight assault to slaughter sixty white people, steal their guns, and rally more enslaved people.”

Another sin of omission comes when Taylor compares slavery between the American South and Spanish Florida. Using the example of Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a North Carolinian who moved to Spanish Florida, he argues that the Spanish system of slavery was more humane since it used the task system (150-155). The task system established a set of daily or weekly goals for the slaves, who would then complete them in the manner they chose, in turn helping them develop autonomous skills. With the possibility of more free time, they could end their workday early. US planters, on the other hand, preferred the gang system in which, to maximize profits, slaves worked from sunup to sundown regardless of how well and how quickly they performed their work. Taylor is correct in stating that most Southern slaveholders forced Blacks into the gang system, and also that unlike the Spanish they reduced or eliminated any avenues of working towards freedom. However, he fails to mention that the task system was actually implemented across the Carolina Lowcountry, and furthermore implemented up to emancipation in the 1860s. Instead of comparing the gang system to a more humane alternative within the United States, he goes out of his way to show how a territory outside of a United States was kinder. In the same passage he praises Kingsley for using black managers, or overseers. This ignores that many Southern planters also utilized black overseers. Harriet Beecher Stowe even included a pair of them in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Overall, American Republics is an easy read which brings attention to a lot of overlooked topics, as well as atrocities many would rather forget. However, it’s woefully unbalanced in presenting the issues, to the point that it willfully ignores or obscures information to play to the current popular white supremacy narrative. Admittedly most casual readers won't recognize Taylor's careful selection of information and choice of words since he is quite the writer. The book can be bought here.

Rating: Adequate

 

Rating System

Must-Read: Definite read for history in general

Highly Recommend: Definite read within a certain subject

Recommend: Good for further information or intro to a certain topic

Adequate: Useful if looking for further information on a certain topic

Pass: Awful, only useful for examining bad or ideologically-tainted history