Book Review: "American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850

Historian Alan Taylor's new book is a searing, and difficult-to-read, look at a pivotal point in American history.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re no doubt aware that American history is a battlefield these days. Of course, that’s always been the case, but we seem to be living in one of those moments where the past--how we understand it, how we see ourselves in relation to it, and what we do about its legacies--is another front in our never-ending and ever-expanding culture war. On the one side are those who want to de-emphasize the darker aspects of our history, supposedly so that we can focus on what unites us. On the other are those who want to take a harder look at the atrocities committed in the past, so that we can have a full and honest accounting of what’s been sacrificed in the forging of this nation in which we currently live. 

Which is why American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, by the renowned historian Alan Taylor, is such an essential book for the present time. In clear prose and elegant storytelling, Taylor strips away the layers of mythology surrounding the early days of the republic to show how, in the significant period after the founding. Rather than a fully-fledged union of states that were driven by a belief in manifest destiny, he demonstrates that they were more like an uneasy alliance of individual nations, with states just as likely to dislike one another as they were to unite against common aggressors. 

Throughout the latter part of the 18th and much of the 19th Century, Americans were afraid of the imperial powers that surrounded them. To the north, the British posed a threat from their domains in Canada, while the French and the Spanish loomed in the Southeast and the Southwest. Some of these fears were well-founded, but many of them were driven in great part by the fear that these powers would ally themselves with either slaves or Native Americans (or both), thus tearing apart the fragile Union that was only barely held together to begin with. In Taylor’s telling, the restless American desire for expansion was more motivated by a desire for safety than it was out of any belief that Americans deserved to own the continent because of some divinely-ordained master plan. 

That tension, between fear of foreign enemies and anxiety about internal aggressors, was a motivating factor for many, particularly those who held power in the Southern states. Southern planters were rightly afraid that their slaves would rise up against them, particularly after the success of the revolution in Haiti. On some deep, primal level, they understood the volcano that they were standing on, and for this reason they saw threats everywhere and acted accordingly. For many of them, slavery was the most important issue, and their belief in it distorted and misshaped almost every aspect of their politics.  

Taylor doesn’t shy away from showing us how deeply racism ran in this country, both in the north and in the south. Indeed, if there was one thing that united White Americans, it was in their fear and loathing of Black people, whether enslaved or freed. This makes for difficult reading, at times, both because the language used by many at the time is so deeply repugnant and, just as importantly, because it’s an aspect of our collective White history that many of us have trouble fully grasping. Many White people, at least in the “North” grew up believing that northerners were more accepting of Black people than their fellows in the south, but the opposite was often the case.

White America’s disdain for Black people was matched only by their antagonism toward the Native Americans, and when they couldn’t get what they wanted from them through treaties, they did so by force, and again there are passages that are difficult to read. The full scope of the genocide perpetrated by settlers against the indigenous people is something that many White people--myself included--often have a difficult time grasping or really accepting, and for this reason alone this book is necessary reading.

There will be those, I’m sure, who frown at Taylor’s clear-eyed depiction of the ugly aspects of America’s early history, particularly those who believe that we should only emphasize the positive aspects of our collective past. However, the value of American Republics is that it shows us that the very social and cultural ills that assail us today--sectional differences, deep and abiding racism (particularly anti-Blackness), and political paranoia--have long been a part of our national character. If we are to have any hope of binding up this fractured republic that we currently inhibit, we absolutely must have the sort of accounting that clear-eyed analyses such as Taylor’s provide. There’s much to admire about this country, but there’s also a lot that needs to be dealt with and many historical wrongs that have yet to be fully addressed.

Taylor is one of those historians who has the ability to discuss both broad trends and smaller details in equal measure, and in addition to showing us events on the national stage, he also drills down into some particular cultural and social movements. We get descriptions of the Shakers, for example, as well as the Mormons and the Methodists (both of whom saw the west as a potential utopia for their particular brand of religious faith). Likewise, we see how such innovations as the railroad, the telegraph, and the canal brought America closer together as a Union, even as issues such as slavery continued to pull it apart. 

American Republics also situates the fledgling United States against the other powers with which it shared the North American continent, and Taylor occasionally zooms out so that we get a brief glimpse of the politics of both Canada and Mexico. For a while, American leaders entertained the possibility of conquering their northern neighbor, but gradually that ambition fell away, to be replaced in the 19th by a rapacious yearning to sweep Mexico into the American maw. As with so much else in this period of American history, racism had its part to play, and White Americans terrorized the Mexicans who were still living in the territories they gained after the war. For many, the nation that was gradually taking shape and growing ever larger was going to be a White man’s nation, and any ethnic minority that didn’t fit needed to be either killed or expelled. 

If you read one book on American history, it should be American Republics.