Republic, 1787-1848 Racial, Economic, and Essay

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Still, many prospered -- visitors such as Alexis de Tocqueville from France marveled at American's drive to acquire wealth, American faith and sociability, as well as the profound racial divisions that characterized American society. American society was poised in continual paradoxes -- religious yet money-hungry, disdainful of social hierarchies yet dependant upon oppressing or disenfranchising races to secure advancement of poorer whites. America was also land-hungry in a way that put it into conflict with its neighbor Mexico, despite its insistence upon being against colonialism, having been born of resistance to colonial Britain. This resulted in the Mexican-American War and the eventual incorporation of Texas into the Union.

Texas and the West itself is still another paradox of the American experiment. For those unable to become wealthy through capitalism, striking out on one's own in the west seemed a better alternative to the increasingly civilized and also socially entrenched east. Thus the west, even more so than the east, was both anti-elitist yet elitist -- it offered profound social mobility for some, but for others, it provided a justification for further relegating social 'others' to the margins of society.

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In the case of African-Americans, life became even more difficult, as various routes to freedom were hemmed in legally and culturally. Every state admitted to the union reignited the debate of slave vs. free and showed the strains upon the Missouri Compromise.

America is often said today to be characterized by social divisions, of red state vs. blue state. But in reviewing this history, the reasons for these social divisions become clearer. The 'don't treat on me' ethos of the south and west and mistrust of interference by the federal government results from resisting elitism and control of northern industrialism and culture, but also uses the control of 'others' such as African-Americans and Native Americans to articulate that resistance. And capitalism in the north was profoundly problematic in the way that the social mobility it promised was contingent upon the oppression of many workers. America the free, the proud, yet also -- America the paradoxical.

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