A Time of Perfect American National Unity is a Myth, But Some US Origin Stories Are Better Than Others

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2020

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The cherished idea of United States as a unified country has been long believed. But today’s guest Colin Woodard argues that this is an invented tradition. He has argued for the existence of 11 separate stateless nations within the United States, where rival cultures explain the history, identity, and voting behaviors of the United States. At least 5 explanations for American ideology have existed, from Manifest Destiny to Frederick Douglas's civic nationalism. However, there is a vision of American that can bring us all together.

In his new book “Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood,” he examines how the myth of our national unity was created and fought over by five men—George Bancroft, William Gilmore Simms, Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, and Frederick Jackson Turner—and how it continues to affect us today.

If we’ve never been one America, but several, then where did the narrative of United States nationhood come from? Who came up with it, when, and why? How did it come to be accepted and at what point did it succeed in concealing the fragmented reality? In the 19th and early 20th century, a small group of individuals—historians, political leaders, and novelists—fashioned a history that attempted to erase the fundamental differences and profound tensions between the nation’s regional cultures. These men were creating the idea of an American nation instead of a union of disparate states—but their rosy vision was immediately contested by another set of intellectuals who claimed that if we are a nation at all, it is an ethno-state belonging to the allegedly superior Anglo-Saxon race. This concept eventually morphed into white supremacy and ethno-nationalism in people like Woodrow Wilson.

The fight continues today but there are narratives that could unite all of us and that's what we'll discuss today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of the History
0:12.0	History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.
0:15.0	It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explained how and why we got here.
0:20.0	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.
0:29.0	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
0:32.0	In 2020, something that concerns people on both the political left and right is that the idea of a unified United States of America is falling apart, and different groups are falling into factionalism.
0:50.0	Some even say there could be a civil war coming on.
0:53.0	But the idea of a unified United States may not be as historical as we think it is.
0:58.0	Today's guest is Colin Woodard, the author of the new book Union, The Star Will of the Forge of Story of the United States.
1:05.0	And he looks at the myth of how national unity was created and fought over by five different men.
1:11.0	George Bancroft, William Gilmore Sims, Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, and Frederick Jackson Turner.
1:17.0	Most of their names might not be recognizable, but their themes are.
1:21.0	George Bancroft wrote in his 10 volume History of the United States, where America was an innocent unified God chose a nation destined to bring liberty to humanity.
1:30.0	William Gilmore Sims was an antebellum's health man of letters, and argued that Bancroft's vision of equality promised by the Declaration of Independence was a sham, and America was built on the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, and other races were inferior, and a caste system, with slavery, was necessary.
1:47.0	Frederick Douglass was a famed abolitionist, and a fugitive slave, also a huge influence on Abraham Lincoln, who called for America to live up to its promises of liberty for all, and that all men were created equal.
2:00.0	Woodrow Wilson, the president, was the first southerner elected to the presidency since the Civil War, a white supremacist, who re-segregated the government.
2:09.0	He screened the movie The Birth of a Nation, a celebration of the KKK at the White House, and his vision of ethno-nationalism persisted until the 1960s.
2:18.0	Finally, there's Frederick Jackson Turner, whose famous source Frontier Thesis, the idea that America became a free and egalitarian people forged on the frontier.
2:26.0	The idea lives long into the 20th century, and explains the popularity for Western movies.
2:31.0	So we get into all these different ideas of what American unity means, and for the 21st century, what is a vision that is the best for the future of the nation?
2:40.0	This is a very contemporary topic, and there's a lot to unpack here, and I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Colin Woodard.
2:46.0	Colin, welcome to the show.
	...

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