History

America’s Great Divide: The End of E Pluribus Unum

The centralization of power in colonial Spanish America contrasted sharply with the autonomy of British North American colonies, influencing their paths to independence. While Madrid closely controlled Spanish colonies, London allowed for an important degree of self-governance in its colonies. The rise of two dominant political parties in America reflects historical divisions and raises concerns about the dangers of clashing majorities, threatening the principle of E pluribus unum.
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The End of E Pluribus Unum

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January 15, 2025 05:07 EDT
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Centralization was pervasive in colonial Iberian America, with Spanish America experiencing it longer and more intensely than Brazil. Endless rules, norms and regulations within an overwhelming bureaucratic environment defined colonial relations with the metropolis. By 1635, the Spanish Crown issued 400,000 decrees for the colonies, equivalent to 2,500 annually since Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. The only defense against such centralizing impetus was distance, which allowed for a certain degree of practical, if not juridical autonomy.

Centralizing obsession versus mosaic of communities

Madrid had to defer the most minor decisions regarding the Spanish American colonies. Building a town’s public square required the King’s authorization. Similarly, ecclesiastical matters also needed royal approval at every level. Juan Garcia Icazbalceta remarks: “Without the authorization of the King, no church, monastery or hospital could be founded, nor could bishoprics or parishes be established. No priest could cross to America without a specific royal permit.” Only at the lowest level, represented by the town councils, could Spanish born in America, the so-called creoles, exert direct participation. 

This centralizing obsession uniformed Spain’s possessions in America. As John Elliot pointed out, a Mexico City gentleman visiting Lima, 2,600 miles to the south, would have felt entirely at home during colonial times. Indeed, “Civic institutions were identical; the forms of worship the same.” The Spanish homogenizing impulse, carried out to the minimum detail, made its whole American empire a single entity.   

The contrast with the English colonies of North America could not have been greater. There, ample political autonomy prevailed. Colonial assemblies, working in tandem with a British Governor whose salary they paid, held broad authority over local public goods, property rights, religious freedom and contract enforcement. As John Elliot remarked, British America “was a society whose political and administrative institutions were more likely to evolve from below than to be imposed from above.” 

Indeed, over the hundred years before the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), London agreed to local political freedom in exchange for the colonists accepting British “light” control over them. During that time, Great Britain gave colonial assemblies wide autonomy and independence, which were essentially political, personal, religious and economic rights. 

As John Lewis Gaddis explains, referring to British colonization in America: “The violence [in the metropolis] multiplied reasons for emigration, as did the promise, upon arrival in America, of commercial opportunities, the toleration of multiple faiths, and the prospect of lighter-handed rule. Heavy-handed domestic distractions -even, under Oliver Cromwell, a failed republican experiment- left little choice from London’s perspective but to allow a colonial ‘mosaic of communities’. By the time Charles II made lightness his path to ‘restoration’ in 1660, heterogeneity had established itself across the Atlantic.” 

From James II to the Seven Year War

This “lighter-handed rule,” and even the toleration of multiple faiths, could have been derailed if the so-called Glorious Revolution had not deposed James II (Charles II’s brother) in 1688. As a staunch Catholic who aimed to return Britain to Rome and centrally administer the country and its colonies according to France’s Louis XIV model, he could have imposed significant changes upon the American experiment. 

The early abortion of James II’s grand ambitions guaranteed that the “mosaic of communities” of British North America could follow its course unperturbed. So much so that several decades later, as  John Lewis Gaddis refers, a young John Adams visiting the planters of Virginia or the slave owners of South Carolina would have felt a cultural clash almost as great as if had been in another continent. What a contrast with the Mexico City gentleman visiting Lima, alluded to by John Elliot!

According to Robert Harvey, the American experiment was so successful: “The thirteen colonies, far from behaving as subordinate to British rule, considered themselves on an equal footing with the mother country. They had their own parliaments and political systems. They elected their own officials. They were English-speaking freemen – much freer, indeed, that many of their peers in Britain, where the upper and middle classes remained dominant, though comparatively small and exclusive. They provided their own defence forces and police.”

Problems began when Britain won the Seven Years’ War with France. On the one hand, London had a large debt to pay due to that conflict. On the other hand, it had acquired an enormous empire in the Americas, which made the 13 colonies much less relevant. Britain, thus, began pressuring the future United States to finance a portion of that debt. At the same time, it could now exercise a more centralized power. Empire-wide policies not only drove this change but also allowed the colonies to fall more firmly under its control once the threat of France was removed from the American scene.

 As a result, a spiral of action and reaction began to take shape, with London tightening the nut and the colonies increasing their defiance. Similarly, the United Kingdom felt that eliminating the French threat made their colonies more dependent on it, and the colonists felt less in need of British protection. 

 However, London’s willingness to suspend colonial legislatures turned out to be a bridge too far to cross. The suspension of all the acts of the New York Assembly and the disbanding of the Massachusetts Assembly became a direct affront to everything the colonials held as inalienable liberties. Especially so because British heritage emphasized a group of fundamental rights, among which political representation was a towering one. War, thus, became inevitable.

Self-governing was not a problem; heterogeneity was.

A war from which the rebellious colonists emerged victorious. Having had a long experience managing their parliaments and making their own decisions, they were more than prepared for their newly independent status. Again, the contrast with their Spanish-speaking neighbors from the South could not have been greater. When these attained their independence from Madrid a few decades later, they were utterly unprepared for the challenges ahead. They were in their political infancy, having only experienced the most extreme centralizations for 300 years. Independence for them became tantamount to the sudden beheading of their political and societal structures. 

However, if self-governing was not a problem for the emerging United States, heterogeneity certainly was. Merging this mosaic of communities into a single nation was not an easy task. Interestingly, the founding fathers never thought bridging differences through homogenization was the way forward. Moreover, although they shared Thomas Hobbes’ mistrust of human nature, it never occurred to them that a “Leviathan” able to provide law and order in exchange for taking liberties away was an option. 

Much to the contrary, the medicine that they envisaged was to expand heterogeneity even more. This is by way of dividing power as much as possible, with the intention of allowing existing differences to check one another. By promoting a negative equilibrium of forces, competing factions and groups would have no alternative but to bargain and compromise to move ahead. Hence, the Latin words that symbolized the founding fathers’ ideal of society: E pluribus unum.

Indeed, to the extent that every obverse had its reverse, society could check itself amid the proliferation of countless single interest groups. To make this happen, though, it was necessary to protect minorities from the homogenizing might of a too-powerful majority. Thus, allowing interest groups to preserve their own space without being swallowed by an overwhelming majority became a fundamental responsibility of the government. Hence, the anti-majoritarian nature of the American political system.

However, with the issue of slavery left unresolved by the founding fathers, two feuding visions of society were left as a legacy for its political successors. Compounding it, the founders had left deliberately vague where the boundary lay between state and national authority. These two subjects intermingled, generating two overwhelming, contending majorities that swallowed minorities on their path. A second generation of political leaders took on the task of dealing with this highly complex situation and preserved peace through hard-reached compromises. The so-called “big three” -David Webster, John Calhoun and Henry Clay- played a leading role in this regard, while the Missouri Compromise was the fundamental arrangement of the time.

From the Civil War to today’s societal horizontal fracture.

However, no compromise could indefinitely avoid a big and bloody confrontation between two irreconcilable majorities. As Felipe Fernandez-Armesto puts it: “There were lots of civil wars in the nineteenth century … In all these conflicts, old-fashioned agrarian societies –like the Confederacy with its planters and slaves- succumbed to the industrializing giants: Prussia in Germany’s wars of unity, Piedmont in Italy’s Risorgimento, Chosu and Satsuma in Japan’s Meiji Restoration, and the Union in the American Civil War.”

In other words, the American Civil War followed the same pattern as other wars of the second half of the 19th century, where the modern and industrializing ones defeated agrarian and old-fashioned regions and segments of society. Agrarian and old-fashioned regions and segments of society were defeated by the modern and industrializing ones. Henceforward, the U.S. would prioritize industrialization. However, it would do so jointly with its territorial expansion towards the West. However, this dual nation-building process is the anti-majoritarian vision of society that followed the founding fathers’ prescription of avoiding the homogenizing mightiness of a too-powerful majority. 

After little more than a century and a half after America’s Civil War, the country has gotten back to the kind of conflicting majorities that led to that abhorrent event. Society has bifurcated into two overwhelming visions that are gulping down minorities in their path. The numerous obverse and reverse that were called to control each other through bargaining and negotiation are merged into two all-encompassing majorities: Republicans and Democrats. Examples of this abound.

There is an economic divide whereby, while some believe that lowering taxes can promote investments, others believe in redistribution by way of taxation; there is a regional divide, expressing the dichotomy between regressive hinterland areas tied to rural and decaying industrial zones and booming coastal cities associated to intensive knowledge industries. There is a cultural divide whereby some hang to the past as an identity anchor, whereas others want to reinterpret that past under the light of current values; there is a religious divide where the immovable certainties of the “revealed truth” clash with reason and with the moderation invoked by a more secular population.

There is an environmental divide whereby those who support fossil fuels and traditional basic industries are confronted by those aiming for a green economy able to save the planet; there is an arms-bearing divide where while some feel entitled, others feel threatened; there is an abortion divide in which where some see an attack against human life, others see an attack against their bodily rights; there is a gender divide where while some feel bewildered and threatened by the flux in sexual identities, others feel stigmatized and discriminated; there is a knowledge divide where while some disparage science and merit, other vigorously defend them. And so on.

In the past, these differences emerged within vertical societal fractures, where countless groups with contrasting beliefs could balance each other. Given its anti-majoritarian tradition, no other country was so well prepared to handle these divisions as the United States was. But this has been turned upside down. Republicans and Democrats have delineated two antagonistic visions of society based on aggregating these vertical fractures.

Today, people argue that a single vote encompasses a person’s religion, ethnicity, gender identification, and even favorite store. Partisanship has become tantamount to mega-identities, whereby everything that each majority represents turns into an existential threat to the other. The result is nothing other than a gigantic horizontal fracture that cuts society in the middle while destroying the communal bonds that held the country together. 

Going back to the exemplifications of the Mexico City gentleman visiting Lima or to a young John Adams visiting Virginia or South Carolina, during colonial times, a Texan visiting Indiana nowadays would feel totally at home, in the same manner in which he would feel threatened by the cultural clash when visiting California or Massachusetts. Red states and blue states, indeed, are becoming different countries altogether. Something not very dissimilar to what led the U.S. to its Civil War. Overwhelming majorities can become, no doubt about it, dangerous matters. Especially when they conflict with each other in almost existential terms. This means the end of the E pluribus unum cherished by the founding fathers.

[Liam Roman edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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