U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policies

U.S. Domestic and Foreign Policies Prior to the Civil War

It is usual to perceive the United States domestic situation prior to the Civil War as being predominantly defined by a single duality: there was the pro-slavery South and the opposing North. What is largely missed in this view is how a greater, national unity of sorts actually served to escalate the tensions leading to the war, even as it reflected poorly on an aspect of the American character that was increasingly revealing itself. Namely, there was a widespread ideology, one manifested by both North and South, persistently holding to a visceral superiority of the white, Protestant American power structure and government. As adamantly as America declared itself the bastion for the oppressed, it consistently evinced virtually aristocratic principles and policies.

That this sense of superiority was in place nationally may be seen by examining several, seemingly disparate occurrences, and one actually taking place on foreign soil. In regard to foreign policy, the U.S. was, despite its relative novelty as a world power, displaying an extraordinary degree of confidence, if not arrogance, to other nations. No example of this is more striking than Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan in 1854. Ostensibly intending to impress the isolated Japanese with specimens of American ingenuity and manufacturing, Perry's display also featured the inescapably intimidating component of massive, black warships (Maier, Keyssar 430-431). Securities treaties largely to U.S. advantage, then, were perhaps more a result of tacit intimidation, rather than an expression of Japanese admiration. Moreover, this was evidently a case of the profound sense of superiority within the American contingent, inevitably based on perceptions of a racial quality, disregarding another culture's values entirely. For Perry, it was about staking international territory and gains by virtue of an innate empowerment.

Harriet Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin demonstrated a further component to the pervasive entitlement evinced by the nation in these years. Southerners had vehemently objected to the fact that Perry's display to the Japanese had been exclusively devoted to Northern achievements. When Stowe's novel emerged, intended by the author to generate feelings of shame in the white, Protestant slave owners, the reaction was instead that of an outraged sensibility. Far from being contrite, Southerners more emphatically held to the perceived, innate superiority of their race and breeding, comparing themselves to Biblical patriarchs as a means of validating these perceptions and justifying slavery (432). If Perry's journey had demonstrated Northern hubris, Stowe's novel generated its Southern equivalent.