by John Marini
The young social scientists, the children of the clergy, were quickly persuaded to the view that positivism had successfully united the spirit of science and the spirit of religion.43 Moreover, that union would come to inspire great expectations concerning the use of technical rationality in solving every human problem. Such a transformation, however, would require an expanded or positive government and social control of economic organizations, as well as expanded and rationalized public bureaucracies. The expertise generated in the university would establish the conditions whereby organized intelligence, or knowledge derived from the scientific method, could begin the process of progressively transforming man, society, and nature itself. In the attempt to establish social justice as the fundamental condition of human justice on earth, positivism had transformed the concern for the eternal, or otherworldly, into a concern for man as he is on earth. Consequently, it had been necessary to destroy the authority of theology and metaphysics. In the future, the salvation of man and society could be found only in an earthly temple. In terms of authority, the university would become the closest thing to the sacred within the rational state.
Reconstructing Society: American Social Science and the Modern State
The modern American graduate research university, beginning with Johns Hopkins University in 1876, became an important intellectual force in the period after the Civil War. The social science disciplines established themselves as the preeminent authority in terms of defining the meaning of those newly evolving historical categories, economy and society. In doing so, they created the tangible, or concrete, measures of class (economy) and race (society) to establish the empirical and moral ground of what had been historical abstractions. The Progressive intellectuals, liberal and conservative, were in agreement in terms of denying the static natural right foundation of the social compact.44
They were convinced that the transformation of the economy and society (not the protection of political and religious liberty) was to be the primary purpose of a genuine political or social science. Although they disagreed as to whether government or a free market and society should determine the conditions of economic development, no one denied that the economy and society had replaced politics and religion in terms of public significance. As a result, the Progressives came to interpret the meaning of the Civil War not as Lincoln had, in terms of the social compact theory of the American Founders, but in light of the new developments in the understanding of History; more precisely, in terms of the economy and society (class and race). Those categories would provide the tools of measurement within the disciplines of the new social sciences.
The American Founders and Lincoln had understood equality and liberty as the fundamental theoretical ideas derived from the doctrines of natural right. From the Progressive point of view, both had failed to grasp the historical or evolutionary ground of the meaning of liberty and equality. That understanding was made intelligible only in the new social and economic disciplines that would give scientific meaning to those concepts.
Ironically, the Progressives were subsequently to support an opinion derived from the sciences that was remarkably close to the social theories that animated Southern opposition to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. That opposition to the American Founders had revealed itself nearly a generation prior to the Civil War. The Southerners had rejected the principle of natural equality, first, on the ground of modern historical philosophy, and, subsequently, on the ground of science and biology. The South had come to accept race, the superiority of the white race, as well as the necessity of a master class, as new discoveries of history that had established the empirical foundation of the new sciences. On those grounds, it had been possible for many, including John C. Calhoun, Henry Hughes, George Fitzhugh, and Alexander Stephens, to defend slavery as a positive good. Although the new social sciences, in the period after the Civil War, did not attempt to defend slavery itself, they did provide scientific authority for a view that legitimized white racial superiority and made it nearly impossible to incorporate former black slaves into the Union as equal American citizens.45
The modern trends in historical scholarship and social science research, both German and American, had helped transform the meaning of liberty and equality. As Merriam noted:
The modern school has, indeed, formulated a new idea of liberty, widely different from that taught in the early years of the Republic. The “Fathers” believed that in the original state of nature all men enjoy perfect liberty, that they surrender a part of this liberty in order that the government may be organized, and that therefore the stronger the government, the less the liberty remaining to the individual. Liberty is, in short, the natural and inherent right of all men; government the necessary limitation of this liberty.
Merriam insisted, however, that:
Calhoun and his school, as it has been shown, repudiated this idea, and maintained that liberty is not the natural right of all men, but only the reward of the races or individuals properly qualified for its possession. Upon this basis, slavery was defended against the charge that it was inconsistent with human freedom, and in this sense and so applied; the theory was not accepted outside the South. The mistaken application of the idea had the effect of delaying recognition of the truth in what had been said until the controversy over slavery was at an end.46
In that remarkable assertion, Merriam acquiesced in the view that slavery obscured the truth of the historical and scientific fact that race, not nature, had established the fundamental conditions of political right and determined the meaning of human freedom and equality. Consequently, Merriam (and other leading Progressives) defended the view of Calhoun and the Southerners that racial superiority provided the moral foundation of a master class. Thus, he could state unequivocally, and in his own name, that: “not only are men created unequal … but this very inequality must be regarded as one of the essential conditions of human progress.… This fundamental fact that individuals or races are unequal is not an argument against, but rather in favor of, social and political advancement.”47 Merriam insisted therefore that “Liberty is not derived from the natural equality of all men, but is the reward of the races who have contributed most to human progress.”
Herbert Croly, one of the most influential public intellectuals of the Progressive Era, agreed with Merriam and the Southern defenders of slavery concerning the question of race. “The slave holders may have been wrong in enslaving blacks, but they were right in their view that only certain races were capable of self-government.” Croly was of the opinion that “negroes were a race possessed of moral and intellectual qualities inferior to those of white men”; therefore, they should not be enfranchised as fellow citizens.48 In looking at the origins of the new disciplines of the social sciences, nearly all of them took the notion of racial superiority for granted. As a result, those disciplines were united in the rejection of the doctrine of natural right, natural human equality, and the Constitution understood as a social compact. Insofar as they rejected slavery, it was on the grounds that it had become an historical anachronism. Furthermore, they insisted that this view was confirmed by history itself, in the victory of the Union armies. With the passing of the institution of slavery, it had become possible to understand that political capacity, or the suitability for self-government and freedom, was dependent on the progress of the races. As Merriam had indicated in his assessment of Calhoun, it was “the mistaken application of the idea” (racial superiority) in the defense of slavery, that “had the effect of delaying recognition of the truth in what had been said until the controversy over slavery was at an end.” In Merriam’s view, Calhoun’s theory could have been vindicated only after slavery had been ended. Until that time, it had not yet become possible to understand the historical and scientific truth “that only certain races are capable of self-government.”
The historians’ admiration of Lincoln rested on what they considered an historic achievement, the establishment of the modern nation,
or state. Lincoln’s own understanding of his actions in defense of the Union rested on the necessity of upholding the conditions of the social compact. It required, therefore, a reaffirmation of the founding principles of the regime. Yet the Progressive social scientists would interpret his role as that of establishing and vindicating the historical evolution of the state. The Civil War and the consolidation of the Union was thought to be historical proof of the fact that social compact theory (the foundation of constitutionalism) had been relegated to the dustbin of History. America, after the Civil War, had become a nation-state. The outcome of the war, as Merriam and the Progressives came to interpret it, was not to be understood in terms of the principles of the past, as Lincoln had tried to do, but in terms of the future.
In other words, Progressive social scientists had come to understand the Civil War as an historical progression that had brought about the establishment of a new nation, or the state. It was quite different from the one the “people” had established in the social compact. Merriam viewed the transformation in the following way: “In the new national school, the tendency was to disregard the doctrine of the social contract, and to emphasize strongly the instinctive forces whose action and interaction produces a state. This distinction was developed by (Francis) Lieber, who held that the great difference between ‘people’ and ‘nation’ lies in the fact that the latter possess organic unity.… In general, the new school thought of the Union as organic rather than contractual in nature.” Thus, Merriam concluded: “the contract philosophy was in general disrepute, and the overwhelming tendency was to look upon the nation as an organic product, the result of an evolutionary process.”49 A living organism needs a state, or at least, as Woodrow Wilson came to see, a living constitution.
Merriam knew very well, however, that it was not the case that those who had fought for the Union had done so in repudiation of the social compact. In fact, he admitted that many had not yet become conscious of this historic transformation. Merriam was persuaded that “the supremacy of the Union repudiated the social-contract theory, but it is necessary to recognize the fact the nation was something different in the popular mind and in the philosophic mind from the ‘people’ of earlier days. Nation carried with it the idea of an ethnic and geographic unity, constituted without the consent of any one in particular; ‘people’ was understood to be a body formed by a contract between certain individuals. The very fact that the Union was ‘pinned together with bayonets’ was enough to show that the doctrine of voluntary consent had faded into the background.”50 Historical evolution (war) had established the new nation and destroyed the social compact. In Merriam’s view, the popular mind was still held hostage to the old view of the Founders, a view that had culminated in a social compact. In other words, he was aware that the comprehension of the meaning of the new scientific view was yet to be established in the public mind. Although slavery had come to be seen as an historical anachronism, popular recognition of the fact that the social compact had also become obsolete was not yet fully apparent to most Americans.
In attempting to establish the meaning of the Civil War, many social scientists had concluded that the fundamental achievement of the war was the destruction of the social compact itself. Merriam insisted that “the general idea was that the United States, by virtue of the community of race, interest, and geographical location, ought to be and is a nation; and ought to be held together by force, if no other means would avail. This was the feeling that underlay the great national movement of 1861–1865, and could not fail to be reflected in the philosophy of that time and in the succeeding interpretations of that event.”51
In short, the actual events of history had provided the interpretation for the new theory of the nation. The fact that force was necessary had shown that the doctrine of a voluntary compact of the people was no longer tenable. The South had destroyed the conditions of the social compact. Consequently, Lincoln had been (to use Hegelian language) the “world historic individual” whose will had established the nation. He had transformed the country from a “people,” understood in terms of a social compact, into a modern nation, or state. Of course, Lincoln was unaware of his historic role.
In short, like the theory of evolution itself, success in the historical struggle had proved the rightness of the cause. Lincoln, who had tried to preserve a regime of civil and religious liberty based on the principle of human equality, was celebrated by Progressive social scientists and historians for having established a modern state. But the Progressive historians, who rejected slavery as a relic of the past, had also rejected the doctrine of natural right and human equality for historical reasons. It was possible, therefore, to embrace the theory of racial superiority as an evolving historical and scientific truth. In rejecting Lincoln’s understanding of the principle of equality, the Progressives had come to understand equality historically, in the same manner in which they had understood slavery, as simply an historical anachronism. In assessing the Progressives’ political project, equal citizenship would come to be understood in terms of membership in the state, and rights as citizens of the state would be bestowed by government.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the meaning of nation, or state, and the understanding of equality and liberty came to dominate the political and intellectual discourse. It was not surprising that Southern politicians and Southern intellectuals would unite against the principle of equality as Lincoln and the Founders had understood it. However, it was not only the Southern intellectuals who had come to reject Lincoln’s understanding of those principles. The defense of equality in terms of an abstract truth, as understood by the American Founders and Lincoln, had been systematically undermined by the growing and nearly universal acceptance among historians that History established the ground of social justice.
Moreover, the new social and biological sciences provided an intellectual defense of the inequality of the races. It is not surprising that the view of the Northern intellectuals who greatly admired Lincoln would not differ in any significant way from that of the Southerners. Many of the Northerners had become educated in the new graduate schools in America. But they, too, would come to reject Lincoln’s defense of equality. Although they were opposed to slavery, they had come to understand equality and liberty in terms of the meaning that had been established in the new social and biological sciences.
Charles Merriam was typical of those who had rejected the natural right foundation of the meaning of equality and liberty. He insisted: “from the standpoint of modern political science the slave holders were right in declaring that liberty can be given only to those who have political capacity enough to use it, and they were also right in maintaining that two greatly unequal races cannot exist side by side on terms of perfect equality.”52 Furthermore, Merriam agreed with the Southerners that “rights do not belong to men simply as men, but because of the superior qualities, physical, intellectual, moral or political, which are characteristic of certain individuals or races.”53 The denial of the doctrine of natural right, as a standard for political rights, had made it nearly impossible, subsequently, to defend the original understanding of equality as the fundamental principle of union and citizenship. The new sciences had established race and class as the categories necessary to determine the capacity for political rights and as the ground of equal citizenship.
The failure of Reconstruction to establish a new ground of citizenship for the former slaves is widely viewed as a tragedy and a failure of politics in both the North and South. What has often been ignored is the near uniformity of intellectual opinion, North and South, on the question of equality and race. That solidarity of the intellectuals made it nearly impossible to solve the problem of citizenship in a manner consistent with the original meaning of equality and liberty. Much of the scholarly opinion in the newly developed social sciences following the Civil War criticized the North’s attempt to enfranchise the former slaves as equal citizens. The North was condemned for extending the franchise, and
the South was praised for obstructing Negro voting. The leading political scientist of the day, Columbia’s John W. Burgess, observed that “it is the white man’s mission, his duty and his right to hold the reins of political power in his own hands.… The claim that there is nothing in the color of the skin from the point of view of political ethics is a great sophism. A black skin means membership in a race of men which has never of itself succeeded to reason, has never, therefore created any civilization of any kind.”54
In looking at the scholarship during Reconstruction, it is clear that historicist thought linked to science had prevailed. To take only one example, James Ford Rhodes, “who wrote the first detailed study of the Reconstruction period, fully subscribed to the idea that Negroes were innately inferior and incapable of citizenship.” Rhodes thought it a great pity that the North had been unwilling to listen to such men of science as Louis Agassiz who could have told them that the Negroes were unqualified for citizenship. “What the whole country has only learned through years of costly and bitter experience,” declared Rhodes, “was known to this leader of scientific thought before we ventured on the policy of trying to make negroes intelligent by legislative acts: and this knowledge was to be had for the asking by the men who were shaping the policy of the nation.”55 Rhodes had been an ardent opponent of slavery and a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln.
The learned opinion of the time was summed up in a single sentence by William A. Dunning, Charles Merriam’s teacher and a prominent political theorist at Columbia University. He noted that “the whole difficulty of Reconstruction … stemmed from the fact that the ‘antithesis and antipathy of race and color were crucial and ineradicable.’”56 In looking back on that period, most social scientists and historians have considered Reconstruction a political failure. But given the intellectual opinion of the time, it is hard to see how it could have succeeded. Furthermore, it is not surprising that the country had great difficulty integrating the newly freed slaves as equal citizens even after the passage of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. Nor is it surprising that Progressivism, in its origins as a political movement, was almost completely indifferent to the civil rights of black Americans.