1. The U.S. Constitution 2. Abraham Lincoln and union victory in the Civil War. 3. Victory in WWI & WWII
because it HAD to work for the world plan.... things go right because they are made to go right. things go wrong because they are made to go wrong.
1a. George Washington, unlike every other insanely popular revolutionary leader in history, actually stepped down: twice, in a just and orderly manner, and showed deference to the established legislative body. If he doesn't resign his military commission, or declares himself King and still dies without any offspring, I think we get a Civil War I sixty years earlier: with Jefferson and Hamilton's heads on a couple of pikes.
For Real. We could have owned all of Mexico. Instead, we were kind. We paid 'em about $18million for territory we could have seized as spoils of war. As a result, we own just over half of Mexico. Just another brilliant purchase of land by us to go with $15mil for Louisiane and $7mil for Alaska.
But, when he walked away from the crown, America was still not a truly unified country. Though a noble gesture on his part to walk away from power, he left the country leaderless. The great experiment was failing. States were loosely bound under the inadequate Articles of Confederation. There was no president, no national currency, so a complete lack of economic unity and not much political unity (central government was weak and did not even have the power to tax). They were United States in name only until the Constitution established a firm bond under a strong central government, thus building the framework for a nation rather than a union of disparate states. I give Washington a lot of credit in that his character influenced how the Presidency was designed in the Constitution (heck, he was president of the constitutional convention), and everybody knew he would be the man to be 1st President. The Constitution and George Washington (father of our country) are very much intertwined in that respect, so I'm probably ok with item #1 being "George Washington and the US Constitution."
On slavery: My understating, and this comes only from what I’ve read, is that slavery impoverished the south. A healthy economy requires a healthy middle class and the slave economy in the south produced a society where about 40% of the population had essentially no disposable income at all. Right now we’re in an economy where consumers are pulling back and not spending, and that’s having a big impact on the economy, but then a huge percentage of the people in the south had no money to spend at all. The rest of the population was apparently quite poor because there wasn’t much of an economy for them to live on. With relatively few paid workers with disposable income to spend in restaurants, and buy clothes with, and go to movies, etc., there were many fewer businesses and much less economic activity in general.
I don't think it matters whether slavery was economically beneficial. One thing is clear: the dispute over slavery almost destroyed this country. In my view, slavery can't be anything but a negative factor, because America is clearly better without it.
The industrial revolution and WWII is really what launched this country into an economic superpower. The industrial revolution because so few countries had the resources to take full advantage of it. WWII because it engulfed so much of the world in the hell of world while our infrastructure was hardly scratched saved pearl harbour. Because it marked the fall of colonialism (which took resources away from european countries) and becuase of a large influx of intelligencia from all over the world, particularly European Jews.
no one was going to make money working in cotton fields. the labor would have to be very cheap slavery or not.
That's very true. They were the most motivated though, and at the time, there was abundant land for any homesteader to put a stake into and call it their own. A lot of it seems like very great timing. The 13 colonies gained formerly British territories from winning the Revolution. Once those filled up enough to be sustainable, the Louisiana purchase falls upon our lap. Then when cities became too crowded from growth and immigration, settlers were able to score new land from a generous government in Mexico. Except this time those settlers rebelled after Mexico decided to ban slavery. It is debatable that those settlers would have rebelled regardless of slavery, but that was the flashpoint that altered Texas history. 10 years later, after Texas decides to join the Union, the US once again gains even more land, almost increasing its size by a half for a mere pittance in true worth and a treaty that was used for scrap paper. At this point, a Civil War was going to happen sooner or later, with or without slavery. Social mobility was at a point where if you or your kinsmen didn't like what you were doing, you could move elsewhere and form your own life or community. The South tried to do it on a larger scale. Without the Civil War there wouldn't be a resolution on what government level held the real power. Plus the Civil War brought on ridiculous levels of industrialization in the North. As federal ties were being sown philosophically, physical ties came in the form of railroad tracks that stretched to the pacific. As it turned out, America became a respectable worldwide military power after the Civil War, and that ultimately answered the Indian Problem... IMO, slavery and indigenous genocide (plus your plain ol' vanilla spoils from plundering a weaker nation) are integral parts of our history. Trying to mitigate it diminishes how important it was to our current prosperity and power. We could debate how much we didn't need either, but I think it serves to assuage a collective guilt, just like making native Americans into abstract noble savages rather than one of the most impoverished demographic in America. We shouldn't forget its impact, otherwise we'll cling onto beliefs that it was only hard work that allowed our prosperity or that it was a collective destiny of our "rightness and justness" that made us the best nation in the world. History is never that romantic.
No, but it is written by the winners. They can be romantic. You bring up many good points and it is a funny conundrum. There are many stains in our foundation. Just as you said though, they have made us regardless of whether they were right or wrong. Thats like any individual. We make mistakes, but they ultimately make us who we are. Unfortunately it is what it is.
I find the natural resources argument perplexing. We didn't have a ton of natural mineral wealth, but in arable land, timber, stone, and more ordinary commodities, the US is very wealthy. On the flipside, I have seen the argument that the US was successful because it didn't have great mineral wealth that would distort the local economy and society - the Dutch Disease. Colonists in gold-rich areas applied a wealth-extraction model in which men came without their families, subjugated locals, and exported wealth back to Europe, to which they'd eventually return. Without such liquid wealth, colonists instead would come with their families and set up shop for the long term. Picking up from Grizzled's post, it could be argued that the South had a hybrid version of the wealth extraction model and that they were eventually outpaced by the North because it had fewer resources to distort their economy.
A constitution put together by brilliant men limiting the powers of the federal government and directing those powers to the states where they can be better controlled. Freedom Opportunity Possiblitiy
thats debatable... On the notion of slavery, only a small number of people had slaves relative to the general population. If you compare the numbers to those imporrted into the carribean, mexico, south america, europe you may be surprised to find that the USA was late to the party and did not even come close in volume. If slavery is a main part of the success then why are the other areas still not doing as good as the USA? Also the muslims in persia were importing slaves long before any of the other areas mentioned and long after the USA obolished it. They haven't done so good either...
It wouldn't have taken much disposable income in their hands to make a pretty big impact on the economy, given that they made up over 40% of the population. I wonder if during reconstruction they had bought out, or perhaps seized on some grounds relating to the war, all the plantations in the south and turned them over in one way or another to the slaves who worked them what the outcome would have been. Maybe they could have hired managers for the plantations and paid the ex-slaves wages, and given them a an ownership share in the plantation. In that case the ex-slaves, although individually doubtless still very poor, would have been a big economic force in the south as a group, and the power of that new, huge, consumer group might have gone a long way towards integrating the south. I wonder if the power of the dollar might have trumped racial prejudice for a lot of people.
