Alan Taylor on Revolutionary Ironies and the Continental Civil War

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0:26Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm chatting with Alan Taylor, who's professor of history at the University of Virginia. He could plausibly be considered America's greatest living historian. He's written numerous books on colonial America, Native Americans, the Revolutionary Period, the early now mid and partly latter part of the 19th century. He is one of only very few people to have won two Pulitzer prizes. Let me stress the new book, Publication Date May 21st, is American Civil Wars, a Continental History, 1850 to 1873. I enjoyed reading this very much, learned a great deal from it.

1:11Alan, welcome. Well, thank you, Tyler. I really appreciate having the chance to talk with you. Let's start with the Revolutionary Period. We will work up to the topics in your book. But initially, why did only the 13 colonies declare independence? So there's this thing we later call Canada to the north. Yeah. Why aren't they part of this? Well, it's also all these British colonies in the West Indies, like Jamaican, Antigua, and Barbados. If you look at the population figures, the places that rebel are the places that have the largest populations, and they're connected with each other. So, there is a greater confidence that you can resist militarily, whereas if you're one of these islands or you're one of these small colonies to the north, you're very tenuous and you're very dependent on the British Royal Navy.

1:59And that means that there's a higher threshold in order to build up the confidence to rebel. And what's the influence of new France on this process? Well, in Canada, at that time you had a French -speaking majority and a Catholic majority. And recently, meaning 1774, the British had modified the French Canadians by basically endorsing their system of law and their religion and protecting it by law. And that's one of the things that alienated the 13 colonies that were very much against Catholicism at that time. So the French Canadians were, you know, the devil we know well, which is the British Empire, is better than the devil that we fear even more, which is the the Protestant colonists to their south.

2:41Now, here's a quotation from your writings at page 37, quote, one of the great ironies of the American Revolution was that it led to virtually free land for settlers in British Canada while rendering land more expensive in the United States. Unquote, could you explain that please? Sure, the war was very expensive. So all the states and the United States also incurred immense debts. Well, how are you going to pay for that? This is the time there's no income tax and the chief ways in which governments could raise money were on import duties and Then on selling land and there was a lot of land provided you could take it away from native peoples and So all of the states and the United States were in the business of trying to sell land But also they were liant within the states on these land taxes and all of these go up then to try to finance the war debt Whereas in British Canada, the British government is subsidizing the local government.

3:41They're paying the full freight of it, which means that local taxes were much lower there. And it also meant that they could afford to basically give away land to attract settlers. So they had this notion that if we offer free land to Americans, they will want to leave that new American Republic, move back into the British Empire, strengthen Canada and provide a militia to defend it. So if we think of people who left the original American colonies, how many of them do you think we're leaving for political reasons and how many were leaving because they'll end up north with cheaper? I would say about a third of them are leaving for political reasons and most of those leave very early in the 1780s and then there is a larger number, two thirds of the overall total, who are going during the 1790s in the early 19th century.

4:28And for them, they're not particularly political. So their motivation is that they can get this free land in this lower tax burden by moving into British Canada. We shouldn't exaggerate the numbers, however. We're talking about relatively small numbers, something in the vicinity of about 50 ,000 people at most. And that's a small portion of the millions that lived in the United States. If we think of the American revolution as, at some point, being a kind of surprise, is there any evidence on how asset prices reacted to that surprise? which is the question an economist would ask. It's a great question.

5:03Well, assets are greatly depreciated during the war because these colonies in the New United States highly dependent on transatlantic trade. And so if you've got the Royal Navy, which for almost all of the war is dominating the Atlantic, it's very difficult to send out American produce to European and West Indian markets. and it's very difficult to import goods. And so economists who've looked at the impact of the American Revolution on the economy in the short term, meaning essentially 1775 until 1790, estimate that the economy shrank by a third, which would make it the second greatest depression in all of American history.

5:51So assets were greatly depreciated until there's a new federal government and there's peace. So that during the 1790s there comes a boom, which more than restores the lost property values of the 1780s. In general, why did the British find it easier to mobilize Native Americans as allies? Is it just because they were less expansionist? It's basically again, comes down to population numbers. So you have approximately two and a half million people living in the 13 colonies. Their population is doubling every 22 years. So this is the fastest population growth of any place on earth at that time. And they are an agricultural people overwhelmingly, 95 % of Americans made their living by agriculture at that time.

6:41And as the population doubles, they want the next generation to have the same standard of living, which means they need twice as much land. And so they're expanding. And meanwhile, the British, their population is at that time during the war, is based in Canada, and it's much smaller. So the British are just running a few small forts in the West, and they need Native help to defend those forts against American expansion. So Native peoples are calculating the enemy, and my enemy is my friend. And they see the British is providing them with firearms to resist the American expansion. and so for the great majority of Native peoples, the British Empire is the better bet in order to maintain their hold on their homelands.

7:24Fast forwarding to the War of 1812, which you've written an excellent book about, why couldn't the then more than 7 million Americans overwhelm the three to five hundred thousand? I've seen different estimates, British subjects in what we now call Canada. Well, certainly American leaders thought it would be the Zitomas Jefferson set it would be a mere matter of marching and it turns out wars are always more difficult than their ejectors imagine the United States had virtually no professional military at that time. It an army that was essentially 9 ,000 men spread very thin off over a very large country.

8:03They're going to have to build up their army very, very fast, which meant that they were sending people into combat with virtually no training. And they are going into a difficult landscape in order to try to supply them. So the logistical lines were very long in order to support troops that are going into Canada. And so almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. And then these American forces start to suffer defeats, which then leads a lot of the American public to say, what are we doing here? The Madison administration, which had declared war, was counting on winning some early victories in order to boost public support for the war.

8:46And when they don't get those early victories instead, they get some catastrophic defeats, then suddenly everything gets much more difficult. It's also the British had some good troops there. They weren't numerous, but they were better trained troops than the Americans had. And they also had the support of Native peoples, which turns out to be an enormous asset when you're fighting in a landscape which is largely forested. And that's because of supply lines and food? Well, the bridge had better supply lines because that's a world in which things move more easily by water. And so the British supply line is basically the Great Lakes connecting to the St.

9:22Lawrence River. So it's a lot easier for them to move supplies and their manpower than it is for the Americans who are trying to go over from one watershed into another one. So they're trying to go from the Atlantic watershed into the Great Lakes watershed and the British are much better established in the Great Lakes watershed. And why, you know, looking after the war, why is there never a third war with Britain as so many people had expected? What did those prognostications get wrong? Well, what they get wrong is that the United States is the most important export market for British goods. And the United States relies on Britain for most of its manufactured goods.

10:09Now on time of the 1820s, the 1830s. Also America is a capital -deficient country at that time. It is a land rich country, but it is relatively labor poor and it is capital poor. There is a push to develop a transportation infrastructure in the United States, a form of canals, and then railroads. The United States does not have enough capital to develop these things. So it's a British investment that makes possible the development of American infrastructure. And so a lot of American states and American corporations that are emerging at that time are highly dependent on British capital and they really don't want war to be robbed.

10:58And American cotton exporters are very dependent on the British market. American weed exporters are very dependent on the British market. So there are such powerful economic interests that lead people to draw back from the And there are a lot of brink string that's a period in which there are tensions between Britain and the United States, but the interesting thing is they don't lead to war. Was there ever a chance of a union invasion of Canada right after the US Civil War? There's a chance because that is one of the periods in which there's a lot of tension that's built up. The Northern leaders and the Northern public were very angry at Britain because they had and allowed the Confederacy to obtain some very powerful and effective warships.

11:48The British had allowed a recognition of the Confederacy, a partial recognition of the Confederacy, in the form of seeing them as a belligerent. And this really alienated a lot of Americans toward Britain, who felt that Britain was insufficiently supported over the effort to suppress this rebellion. So there was a lot of talk and there's a lot of triumphalism because the Union forces in April of 1865 have been so triumphant and the United States has one of the largest and best militaries in the world, which was unprecedented in American history. So there was a lot of talk about, well, let's even scores by taking Canada.

12:30But then on the other side of the ledger is that most Most of the public, while they didn't like Britain and kind of like the idea of adding Canada, they wanted their boys to come home. They had been a long, hard, deadly war, and most of the people just wanted the army to be demobilized. So it's remarkable how quickly the Union Army was demobilized. And once that happens, any kind of organized invasion of Canada vanishes. Yes. Under the counterfactual, would America have won that war? An invasion? Yes, they would have won that war. Yes, absolutely. At that point, because they had an organized military, you know, the British had essentially about 12 ,000 troops, and the Union had about a million.

13:19So it would have been very one -sided. Now, the British Royal Navy was probably still better than the American Navy, so there would have been a lot of collateral damage to seaports like Boston or New York City because the Royal Navy could have come in and done some real damage there. So it would not have been a war in which there was not a lot of suffering on the part of the Americans, but it's a war in which if the goal was to conquer Canada, that could have been readily done. Fleshe at the whole picture for me now, is this why the British North America Act comes in 1867? Yes, I mean the Canadian leaders have a set of problems.

13:56One of the problems is that was a Canadian union, but it's just between what we now call Ontario and Quebec. Quebec was francophone and what would become Ontario is Anglophone. And so there's an uneasy relationship there. Politicians of all sorts say this can't go on. So one of the ideas that he had was Let's bring in some more partners. Let's bring in the maritime provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Isle, and Newfoundland. And maybe we can also expand to the Pacific. At that time, there was another British colony, British Columbia. And then the Hudson Bay Company in theory owned all the territory between British Columbia and what's now Ontario.

14:41So there were visionaries who said, But let's build a transcontinental country. And this might help us solve the Anglophone -Frankophone problem. Well, you're bringing in a lot more Anglophone. So one of the things that you offer to the French Canadians is, okay, this will be a looser union. This will be one where you'll have more autonomy for Quebec than you currently have. And that becomes acceptable to most French Canadians. Now, the other thing about it is, there are also Canadian leaders are looking to the south I'm saying, okay, the immediate danger may be over of an American invasion, but there's going to be tension again with Britain and the United States.

15:18And we need to be in a better position to defend ourselves. A final factor is that British leaders were getting tired of footing the bill for defending Canada, and they want the Canadians to pay for it. So all of those factors lead into the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. of it. Short of an American invasion, is there a meaningful counterfactual where Nova Scotia and Newfoundland become part of the United States? Yes. And what does that look like? Well, what it looks like is the people in the maritime provinces weren't so sure that they wanted to be linked with Canada. They had much more robust trading relationship with the United States because they're maritime oriented.

16:00There was no railroad at that time linking the Maritimes to Canada. So there were a fair number of politicians in Nova Scotia for home. The first option would be let's just maintain a status quo. We're an independent colony, we're our own little world, and we have creating relations with the United States. Okay, second option is let's join Canada. And that seems a little dodgy to a lot of people. The third option, which some people put on the table is, well, let's leave the British Empire and join the United States. because that's our primary market. So everything was on the table in the 1860s and early 1870s as to what North America would look like in terms of what we now call Canada.

16:44This is a bit of a digression, but how is it that Newfoundland ended up as a kind of independent crown colony for a big part of the 20th century, given that there was the act in 1867? They then separate again. What's the story there? Well, they're in there are separate British colony and They have a very small population in the 1860s 1870s. The economy is essentially just one thing fishing and The market for their fifth is the British islands They don't really see any economic reason to be linked to Canada They see very powerful reasons to remain linked to the British Empire So they're not an independent country, but they're a distinctive colony, and they will remain a British colony separate from Canada until the late 1940s.

17:36If we look at Canada today, we see, as you know, extremely high levels of in -migration, people from all over the world. Do you in any way see this as rooted in Canada's earlier history? Do you have a different perspective on that? For you, Is it a kind of continuity or reversal? Well, Canada has long been a country that has wanted to have more immigrants. And so they have aggressively recruited immigrants ever since the later 19th century. And one of the powerful considerations is they look at the size of their country, trying to just geographic size. And it's just a notch larger than the United States.

18:15But most of that country is Arctic and sub -Arctic. But even despite that fact, the population density in Canada within the temperate zone, which is approximately within 200 miles of the American border that long stretch from the Pacific to Nova Scotia is still underpopulated relative to the United States. Now, part of that corridor is well -populated, particularly in a terrile and Quebec. But points west, points in the maritime, it seems to Canadians that if they want to develop their economic potential and retain some sort of relatively modest equilibrium with the United States, that they need more people.

19:07And so they've been setting quotas in recent years that are up to 500 ,000 immigrants annually, which for a country of Canada size of about 32 million is a significant number. It adds up over time. So right now the proportion of people in Canada who are of foreign birth is rising. But there's also developing some pushback against that because it is contributing to inflation in the urban centers. You mean just housing prices and rents? Housing prices and medical costs too, because they're committed in Canada to public health care. It's been a system that's been very, very popular because it's then effective.

19:52But right now there are strings on it because it's of the numbers of people. And public funding for it is not quite kept pace with either inflation or the numbers of people who want to use the system. A very general question. You've written about this in a number of your books, but many early commentators, especially in Britain, in Canada, even in America, some of the founding fathers. They were very afraid the American Republic was going to collapse. That it was too large, too chaotic, some thought too democratic. What exactly did they get wrong? The people who thought that. What did they fail to see?

20:28Because those arguments did not sound crazy at the time, right? No, it didn't sound crazy at the time. And then they weren't crazy to worry about it. In that the United States did fall apart in 1860 to 1861. And it took an enormous effort, very expensive effort, in terms of lives and money to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And so they had spent a long time, ever since 1776, worrying about what actually did happen in the 1860s, 1861. So you could say, well, yeah, they offended it off for 90 years, but there's a recurrent sense of crisis within the American Republic through much of that period of time, because there's just fear that some region within the country would be growing too powerful.

21:21Or there's a recurrent fear that the country is getting too large, getting America's an olive on the Pacific coast. It was an open question whether those American states would spin off and create their own country. So a lot of things still seem to be possible. It's also important to remember that the form of government that they were gambling on, a republic, had not worked very well in the past in Europe. And it had never been tried on this geographic scale. So they They don't yet have the confidence that their institutions will be durable. Surviving the Civil War is an enormous confidence booster that the United States will hold together despite its great internal diversity and despite its geographic scale.

22:17But before that success in the Civil War, that confidence was absent. And let's say circa 1780, what were general opinions like concerning the Swiss Confederacy? That was seen as okay, a failure, big success. It doesn't seem it was very wealthy then, right? Switzerland is almost never mentioned in American writings of that period. If they want to talk about republics, they're much more likely to talk about the Netherlands. So Switzerland is kind of out of sight, out of mind, for Americans. And do you think it was by anyone viewed as a success or just it didn't matter? Well, if they paid attention to it all then they would think, okay, that's that's pretty good.

23:00They've got a Confederacy. It's been fairly long -lasting. But it's a small country. And it was a Confederacy that was very loose at that time. That's what a fair number of Americans thought they wanted at the start of the 1780s, but by the end of the 1780s, most of the top leadership in the American States had come to the conclusion that they needed something stronger than the kind of Confederacy that you'd see in Switzerland. That they needed something that could be more truly a national government. One, where the government at the center could make decisions that would be binding on all 13 states.

23:39So Switzerland recedes as a potential model as the United States experience, there's so many difficulties with its loose confederation during the 1780s. How democratic were the Jacksonians anyway? Your mentor, Marvin Myers, he wrote on this a great deal, as I'm sure you know. Yes, he did. And he wrote extremely well about it. Okay, it depends on how we want to define a democracy. Let's take the kind of definition that we would use today in which we're saying, well, It's the vast majority of adults. It to participate in making the political decisions that will affect them. By that standard, the Jacksonians are particularly democratic because they're not keen to expand the vote to African Americans to say the least.

24:27And they were not keen to open up political rights to women. So the great majority of adults in the United States were not included in the political system as direct participants. Now, if we say, okay, by the standards of the 19th century, and the transatlantic world, women were just not considered to be political participants anywhere, and we're just talking about the male electorate, then you would say the Jacksonians were democratizers in that, in most of the states, they have broadened the electorate by eliminating the property requirement, though, but they have not eliminated the gender requirement that you be male and they have not eliminated the racial requirement that you be white.

25:16African Americans, even where free, could vote only in the New England states at that time. And in New York, if they met a property requirement, which was pretty high. So it's not what we would consider democratic, but it is more democratic than what had preceded the Jacksonians. In so far as you view the Jacksonian period differently from your mentor, how does that difference shape your view of 1850 to 1873, which is what you cover in your new book? Well, I agree with Myers on most things. What I might, you know, Myers is not, is of a generation where the focus was less on race than it has become and thinking about American history.

26:08So that's not an important dimension of his one great book, Jack Sumney in Persuasion. So the role of American expansion into the West at the expense of Native peoples is just what's not on as agenda. Now that's not to criticize him. It's to say he was focused on in political culture, and that political culture he brilliantly illuminated. But if we expand out the story, and literally to think about American expansion, then it looks like a somewhat different story. Not an entirely different story, because the political culture is very much as Marvin Myers described. But if we also bring in just how obsessed American leaders were at that time with racial difference and at their sense of being beleaguered by the British Empire, in that there's this very defensive expansionism that American leaders commit the country too.

27:21And so I would say that that expansionism, the bill that has to be paid for it comes due in the 1850s, in that the United States had had a magnificent military success over a week country Mexico, during the late 1840s. They have conquered 40 % of Mexico, extremely valuable potential territory, including California, Arizona, and Mexico. And then the issue becomes Okay, what kind of labor system will be allowed by law in this concrete territory? Will it be the labor system that prevails in the northern states of free labor? Or will it be the labor system of the more mixed labor system of the south, where enslaved people are a critical element of the economy?

28:08And these economic questions are linked to visions of what's the good society. Northerners had become quite committed to the notion that they had a superior system, and Southerners had become quite committed to the notion that their system was superior at favoring white men and at favoring Republican government. The two systems have evolved in parallel, but now they're going to come into conflict over what sort of labor system will prevail in this newly conquered territory. And is a civil war inevitable by that point? Well, historians don't like to say that anything's inevitable, but I'll come closer to it than the great majority of historians would do.

28:54It's very hard for me to imagine how the leaders of that time, given how committed they were to different systems, and how committed they were to the notion that only their system could support free government. That I don't quite see how they could have reached a compromise. There was an effort in early 1861 to reach a compromise that would have said slavery is protected forever and the federal government can never touch it. that the West would be divided between the two systems, the geographic line that would be extended across the continent, and that there would be certain restrictions on what the federal government could do in terms of protecting industries with high tariffs.

29:46And neither side was willing to accept that compromise. There were people who wanted to compromise, particularly in the border states, places like Kentucky and Virginia that were kind of keen for that kind of compromise. But most of the North had become committed to the notion that the United States was a nation where the majority should rule. And the deeper South had become committed to the proposition that they could not be united in the same country with a Northern public that favored a true nation. And so I just, I really don't see the juncture between 1850 and 1861 where any other kind of arrangement could have averted a conflict.