Even Mississippi

My poor wife! She’s had to listen to me talking about Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought every day for weeks. There’s a reason this history of the United States from 1815 to 1848 won the Pulitzer Prize. Howe, of course, documents every detail, he explains rather than just describing, he uses copious illustrative quotations, he covers daily life and art and entertainment and science and technology as well as economics and politics and war, and he does it all with elegant, vibrant prose. But the stories he tells! I’d heard these stories in school and read about them since, but not with all these details.

Let’s take the Mexican War for an example. I knew Polk wanted this war and that he wanted Texas and got a lot more. I knew that two war heroes emerged from the fighting, both of whom received the Whig nomination for President, and one of whom won. But I didn’t know that Polk secretly negotiated with a captured Santa Anna, let him go, and told him to get himself made President again and ask for a treaty. I didn’t know that Polk, a Democrat who wanted more territory for the extension of slavery, wanted to win the war decisively enough to get California out of the deal but not so decisively as to create war heroes who would beat him in the upcoming election. (Clearly, he failed in that last goal.) I didn’t know that he relieved his ambassador, Trist, before the conclusion of the treaty because he decided he wanted to dismantle the country of Mexico and take it all. I didn’t know that Trist told the Mexican government that he had been relieved and that they should take his offer anyway rather than becoming absorbed in toto. And I didn’t know that gold was discovered in Sutter’s mill the very week that these negotiations were going on, when Mexico was agreeing to sell California for a pittance.

I’ve often chuckled-slash-tilted-my-head when I’ve read or heard the part of Dr. King’s Dream speech in which he says “even the state of Mississippi.” I’m happy to know that Mississippi recently changed its state flag. Perhaps that’s a sign that Dr. King’s dream is coming a bit nearer to reality. But why did he call out that state in particular? Or maybe my question is, why was Mississippi in special need of being called out? Howe went a long way to explaining that. After large tracts of Mississippi were “bought” from the Indians, white settlers came in a rush to establish new cotton fields. Most of them made their black slaves walk to the new land, and most of these workers had to make the trek in winter, since their owners didn’t want to miss out on any of the growing season. So the white people who came to Mississippi were interested in a quick buck; they had no interest in technological investments or building cities as trade centers. As a result, Mississippi ended up a poor area with few large towns. These settlers also represented the type of slave owner that had no sense of “paternalism” toward their chattel, a sense that led some owners elsewhere in the country, say, to care a bit for the health of their possessed humans or to offer them a modicum of comfort or of education. These dynamics tend to pass from generation to generation, and thus we get Mississippi, perennially low in spending on education, perennially low in median wage, and so rife with racial injustice that Dr. King felt a need to give that state a special place in his speech.

(I see that Mississippi is 51st in the country for median wage in 2020, behind all other states and the District of Columbia. The state is now 46th in number of dollars spent per pupil on education. They’ve moved up recently. So, yes, there’s hope, even for Mississippi.)

I could go on and on. The railroads. The canals. The telegraph. The elections. Debates on internal improvements. Debates over paper money and a national bank. Jackson’s appeal as a man of “natural” talent and his supporters’ suspicion of training, education, and expertise. The rise of voluntary associations. The beginnings of abolitionism. On the other hand, Calhoun’s conversion to a states’-rights-er and the rise of the claim that slavery was a “positive good.” The rise of women’s participation in politics. Every story was a bit familiar and yet full of nuance and new detail that made sense not only of that period but of ours as well. Howe may very well soon find himself in possession of an exlibrismagnis book award to go with his Pulitzer!