It is a verity vindicated by scientific mathematical equation that not everybody gets to partake in the limited pieces of American Pie. America may have grown larger but the real question is over whose dead body? By JIll Starr

Contributory Crises and Continuities Constructing the Resilient United States of America (1776-1900)

Anti-federalist sentiments intermittently flourished throughout the epoch between the American Revolution until the end of the nineteenth century. However certain intervening crises and continuities throughout that era acted as a catalyst for: Expanding, strengthening, and unifying the United States of America into one of the world’s most resilient and powerful nation states. The United States of America was borne in crisis: A self-inflicted abortion in which the original American colonies founded by British land grants permanently severed themselves from their former parent Great Britain in the American Revolution of 1776. America’s first Constitution, the Articles of Confederation written during the Second Continental Congress in 1777 were adopted in 1781. However, the Articles of Confederation were inadequate in meeting America’s immediate new crises as an independent state. The threat of both Indians and the former imperial powers whose presence on the continent (i.e. Great Britain, France, and Spain) presented a clear and present danger to America’s new freedom. Immediately following America’s emancipation, the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 2^nd 1776 and formalized on July 4^th 1776 declaring America free and independent from Great Britain. America’s new independence brought her first crisis; the need for a new form of government.

Americas’ new adoptive parent’s (i.e. United Constitutional Framer’s) were not naïve statesmen. Having been highly educated in Europe, America’s Constitution framers had already instituted government structures throughout the American colonies. Hence the Constitutional Convention convened in 1787 was to construct the United States Constitution in order to both unify and strengthen the loose confederation of states. Centralizing power within a federal government that was nation-centered in lieu of state-centered was necessitated. The United States Constitution solved America’s immediate needs and in doing so both nurtured and matured America into the great power she is today. The Constitution met the following objectives: Unifying the loose confederation of states, centralization of power in a nation-centered in lieu of a state-centered governmental form, establishing national supremacy, power to tax, power to create an army for protecting the new nation from external threats, and to meet foreign policy objectives. After the Federalists successfully ratified the United States Constitution in 1789, America had victoriously weathered her foremost growing pain; the painstaking endeavor of state-crafting the United States Constitution.

Ratified in 1789, the United States Constitution was far from perfect. However, its enduring principles were paramount in raising the infantile America into full maturity. The United States Constitution was the single instrument nurturing, unifying, and preserving America by allowing her to adapt to the many formidable crises that lie in her future. The United States Constitution has continued to sculpt the evolving American landscape for over two hundred years up and into our present historical time: Hence America’s emergence into the hegemonic power that she became during the early 20^th century. Following the death of her Federalist parents, America became the orphan of the mendaciously abusive political machines and loathsome avaricious class of reproducing bourgeoisie. James Madison regrettably foresaw the rise of these ignoble men and referred to them in Federalist Paper #10 as factions. American factions maliciously proceeded to exploit her people, strip her of her beauty, ravage her resources, chopped her body into pieces then leaving her to die.

The American Revolution had unlocked the door for a challenging new epoch of crises and continuities entering both in and onto the American historical stage. Evoked by the timeless words contained in the American Declaration of Independence on July 4^th 1776, the following actors actively took their places and played active formative roles in constructing America’s future political and social development. The actors convoked: Economic and territorial expansionism, originating class and racial conflict, and the spread of democratic sentiment. The invocation: "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another…requires that they should declare the causes which compel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it." Although the Declaration of Independence claimed that "all men were created equal" in principle, it was neither the political nor social practice of the early 19^th century. The "Right to Life" represented the Lockian ideal of limited government. The Lockian idea of a limited government meant neither invading personal civil liberties nor violating civil rights.

The "Right to liberty" meant men had the unrestricted ability to use their human potential to advance their life situation. The "Right to happiness" was relative and specifically directed at materialism and private property. The 1780s and the 1830s were transitory periods in American political and social development: The formation of a two-party political system emerged and continued in American political history henceforth. The founding father’s were not immortals, soon their original intentions for a one party system died with them. There is no mention in the United States Constitution to political parties. Original Federalists (i.e. Madison, Jefferson, and Washington) feared the rise of a split party system. Thomas Jefferson stated: "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go at all." The fear was that two or more parties would chop the American government into innumerable factional interests. This emergence of the two-party system and political machines was inevitable. Southern and Northern divides grew larger owing to their variant economic growth patterns. The southern economy based on a plantation system dependent upon slave labor greatly differed from that of the northern economy heavily based upon trade and merchants. By 1828 AD a two-party system had emerged with the election of President Andrew Jackson. Jacksonians instituted popular politics and democracy.

Jacksonian proponents held public political party platforms and the public was invited to participate. During the Jacksonian Era democracy spread like wildfire throughout America. By the end of the Jackonisn Era, not only could all white males vote, but also the southern and northern states had an irreparable tear between them that would rip them apart later in the Civil War. The opposing Whigs in contrast to the Jacksonian Democrats supported the economic interests of the elite gentry in the south and commercial interests in the north. The Jacksonians were a magnet for the working classes in the north and the poor farmers in the South. During the Jacksonian Era two major political developments occurred. One: Jacksonian expansion of the United States of America westward. Two: Political rivalry between the northern anti-slave industrial interests and the southern pro-slavery agrarian interests fueled the engines of the expanding political machines which erupted into the Civil War from 1861-1865. The Jackson administration birthed westward expansion. Land represented money and greed for that never diminished since the origin of mankind. Andrew Jackson both legalized Indian Genocide and vulgarized the American Constitution with his Grotesque political policy of Indian removal. Considered masculine at the time men, took both their guns and knives and went westward dispossessing Indian lands. Indian lives reduced to vermin. White men with vigilante attitudes used any means necessary to dispossess Indian lands with dollar signs in their eyes.

Jackson’s Indian genocide political practices had a latent agenda of assisting greedy land speculators such as himself. This grotesque practice was supposedly justifiable under that reusable name of self-determination. Protestant ideas such as: White men are above Rule of Law only answerable to a Higher Authority, widely spread misconceptions that anything missing white male genitalia was inferior and could be raped, killed, exploited, tortured, or plundered for profit followed many white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male immigrants to America and has been a continuity in many of their indecent sociological imaginations since. Indian genocide and land dispossession was a crisis to some and a blessing to others. Notwithstanding, the Anglo-Saxon mental pre-occupation with its own superiority did expand American borders out to the Pacific Coast increasing the size of the Union. America’s rise to hegemonic power in addition to her acquisition of west frontier annexations on the contemporary globe was largely determinant of the imperialistic barbarism of Jacksonian policies of Indian Genocide.

American borders were carved by white male knives drenched in Indian blood and their scalps. Equivalent in philistine attributes was the American Civil War. American school books contain high levels of intoxicating substances intended to shroud the historical truths of America with a blanket of nationalism. These myths make the main constituents of the political rise of America’s power into believable bedtime stories for many. Contrary to these myth’s like President Washington could tell know lies, an axiom of American Civil War history is that white persons from the north who gave their lives to free the blacks in the south was not as noble an act as it was a underhanded political maneuver. This led to much of the permanent inter-ethnic hate continuing into 20^th century America. Powerful political machines and patronage amid American Elite’s undertook the joint task of exterminating their own race of white brothers. They sent the poorer whites fighting in the Civil War whilst the wealthier white men bought cheap substitutes to fight in place for them. These underhanded corrupt political continuities contributed immensely to America’s rise as an international hegemonic power. Diabolical actions continue to maintain not only American power, but also her bulging boundaries. Puritan attainment of the goal that one day the world would staring in awe at God’s chosen people surely has come to pass. Contrarily to Ryan’s idea of a happy neighborhood of street rioting mobs, some of us can appreciate the unadulterated truths without slithering away from the realities like snakes.

Cooperative-federalism is more of a sensible and wise assessment of the joint elitist political endeavors that contributed to westward expansion and consolidation of power in America. Certainly not Daniel Webster’s rhetoric of "WE THE PEOPLE". The People of America did not hire Pinkerton strike breakers in the late 19^th labor reform movement. We the people did not dissolve the former community bonds between the old styled New England watch and ward system of community policing by replacing them with a formalized uniformed police force. These endeavors were accomplished by the political patronage and the bribes thereof. America’s rise to power also did not have as much to do with religion as it did with greed. Certainly God’s chosen people would not have murdered over eight-hundred thousand Indians, lynched over two-thousand former slaves post the civil war, and discriminated against women and blacks during the member’s only male white labor unions. These latter day ungodly popular political campaigners have often eclipsed the real agenda of America’s selective political patronage. We the people have never ceased to be excluded in one form or another from the privy club of the American Government. America’s rise in power and expansive borders were veiled to many. Currently, anyone that having eyes can see that Madisonian ideals in conjuction with Hobbesian philosophy contributed to the ungodly behavior and continuity of modern day Patriarchs such as former President Andrew Jackson. It is a verity vindicated by scientific mathematical equation that not everybody gets to partake in the limited pieces of American Pie. America may have grown larger but the real question is over whose dead body?

Miss Jill Starr