This essay surveys the most significant positive and negative influences on American history between 1600 and 1877, framing the entire period around the internal contradictions that culminated in the Civil War. The paper nominates Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Douglass as the era's best influences — for establishing America's credibility abroad, defining its cultural identity, and embodying its egalitarian ideals, respectively. It then identifies Eli Whitney, John Brown, and Judah P. Benjamin as the worst influences, arguing that the cotton gin entrenched slavery, that Brown's violence radicalized the secession crisis, and that Benjamin's Confederate diplomacy and moral hypocrisy exemplified the nation's darkest tendencies.
The paper employs evaluative historical argumentation: rather than simply describing what figures did, it builds a normative case for why their contributions mattered most. This is reinforced by causal claims — for example, connecting the cotton gin directly to the expansion of plantation slavery — that move the analysis beyond biography into historical causation.
The essay divides cleanly into two halves. The first half (best influences) proceeds figure by figure, each with a focused paragraph. The second half (worst influences) mirrors this structure while linking each figure to a specific dimension of the Civil War's origins or conduct. A brief introduction frames both lists around the Civil War as the period's defining event, and the conclusion draws contemporary parallels to reinforce the figures' ongoing relevance.
In the period from 1600 to 1877, the United States was only beginning to establish itself as an independent nation. This era builds toward the climax of the Civil War, in which the contradictions inherent in the national identity finally erupted into armed conflict. Who, then, could be nominated as representing the best — and the worst — of the American enterprise during this time? For different reasons, the best influences are Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Douglass. The worst influences are Eli Whitney, John Brown, and Judah P. Benjamin.
It is difficult to select any three persons who exemplify what is best about America in this time period. Nevertheless, these candidates are noteworthy for representing America at its best in the eyes of the world. Franklin made America seem credible as a home for science, Whitman made America seem credible as a home for the arts, and Frederick Douglass maintained an honest and patient devotion to the egalitarian ideals upon which the country was founded.
Franklin is an easy choice: he established America's credibility in the eyes of Europe. Regardless of the military issues involved in the American Revolution, it was Franklin who showed Europe that a viable independent nation existed across the Atlantic. This recognition reflects his many accomplishments — scientific, technical, literary, and philanthropic, including his endowment of universities and libraries. Without Benjamin Franklin, America might have been understood as merely a vast colonial territory full of raw materials to be exploited. Franklin demonstrated that there was something distinctive about the American character.
It must also be noted that the role he played in the Revolution itself was likely crucial to its success. Franklin's diplomatic missions to Paris ensured French support for the colonies. His own view of the Revolution was somewhat ambiguous — he had supported Royalist causes before the Revolution and had been employed by the British government — yet his ultimate attendance at the Continental Congress lent the proceedings an intellectual eminence that did much to establish America as a viable nation.
To include Walt Whitman on a list of the best influences on America before 1877 may seem an odd choice, since poetry and literature do not make things happen in a direct political sense. But Whitman served much the same function as Franklin. His collection Leaves of Grass demonstrated that America possessed a viable national philosophy. Whitman's poetic tributes to Abraham Lincoln — "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" — gave voice to the public's response to Lincoln's assassination and to the Civil War generally. The fact that Whitman's quasi-religious faith in the American democratic experiment persisted throughout the Civil War, during which he served honorably as a nurse for the wounded, was vital to defining the nation in the war's aftermath. Like Franklin, Whitman was recognized in Europe as a sign of America's maturation as an actual culture.
In conclusion, these three figures each had a damaging effect on the life of the nation. Although other candidates are certainly well known, the immoral qualities they exemplified — placing profit over human life in the case of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, devoting oneself to ideological violence in the case of John Brown, and the hypocritical defense of immoral policies in the case of Judah P. Benjamin — all persist in some form in the twenty-first century. Companies that pollute groundwater through practices such as fracking are the modern equivalent of an inventor finding a way to make slavery profitable. Figures such as Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph are the moral heirs of John Brown. And Benjamin's willingness to serve as a public advocate for an indefensible cause finds echoes in more recent political history.
Because of their particular contemporary resonance, these three figures from the Civil War era serve as enduring examples of the worst tendencies in American public life — tendencies that the nation has never fully escaped.
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