Presidential History and the American Character

History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry.
President Barack Obama, "Address to Joint Session of Congress"

Nope. It didn't happen. Like every President before him, President Obama stretched the truth so far that it became a lie.

In 1862 during the Civil War, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act providing federal subsidies and land grants to private companies to stimulate the building of a transcontinental railroad. But, most of the construction took place after the war. The railroad was completed in 1869.

According to an old standard text, Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (1949), the Central Pacific (the western line) had laid less than forty miles of track by the end of the Civil War.

The first track was laid in 1863 and inched forward slowly during the next years--twenty miles in 1864, twenty more in 1865, thirty in 1866, forty-six in 1867.
Billington, 644

The Union Pacific (the eastern portion) had easier terrain, but fared no better.

Construction was slow at first, as the company struggled to obtain workers and materials from a war-burdened nation; only forty miles of track stretched west from Omaha at the close of 1865.
Billington, 644.

The pace of construction picked up after the end of the war.

The Central Pacific built 360 miles of road in 1868, the Union Pacific 425. For a time, so great was the competition, they seemed destined never to meet; Congress had set no junction point and when the grading crews met they passed each other, laying out parallel roads a short distance apart. The farce only ended when Washington officials ruled the two roads must join at Promontory Point, a short distance from Ogden, Utah.
Billington, 645-646.

The last spike was hammered in a ceremony 10 May 1869.

Among the immediate consequences was the descent upon San Francisco of 9000 unemployed Chinese workers. It did not take long for California to pass laws restricting the rights of Chinese nationals, including the denial of citizenship to these migrant workers that had been imported when they were necessary to build the Central Pacific through the rugged mountains of California and Nevada. With the hardest work finished, these immigrant laborers were a burden to immigrants of European origin. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Irish, German, and Italian immigrants built the Union Pacific.


Corporate Welfare

Another legacy of the Pacific Railroad Act was the land grants. The initial law granted ten square miles of land for each mile of rail laid. This land was to be claimed in alternate sections to encourage development of the adjacent lands. This grand scheme of corporate welfare enables the paradox of the American West: "Fiercely independent region of the U.S. where the proud traditions of welfare logging, welfare mining and welfare ranching continue to this very day" (Tom Toles, "Editorial Cartoon," n.d.).

Billington's summary lays out the details regarding year by year miles of track laid. More recent histories of the West focus on the Western paradox. Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West (1991) contrasts the Western rhetoric of self-reliance with the realities of Federal apropriations.

In the imagination of modern America, the West has come to stand for independence, self-reliance, and individualism. Rhetorically, at least, modern westerners see themselves as part of a lineage that conquered a wilderness and transformed the land; they spring from a people who carved out their own destiny and remained beholden to no one. . . .
The American West, more than any other section of the United States, is a creation not so much of individual or local efforts, but of federal efforts. More than any other region, the West has been historically a dependency of the federal government. . . . [in the nineteenth century] Westerners usually regarded the federal government much as they would a particularly scratchy wool shirt in winter. It was all that was keeping them warm, but it still irritated them.
. . .
After 1960 . . . westerners favored more individualist solutions. They believed that the proper role of government was creating individual opportunities and not mediating between social groups or providing services individuals had failed to secure for themselves. Although couched in terms of frontier self-reliance and older western self-images, western individualism in its most recent form is very much the product of an urban, prosperous, middle-class West whose very existence was the result of federal programs and policies.
White, 57, 576

Obama's effort to highlight the strength of the American character evokes the political fault lines that divide Americans and their representatives in Congress. The fantasy is comforting; reality differs.

Lee Resolution

The Lee Resolution is the first of “100 Milestone Documents” presented online by the National Archives and Records Administration. This site offers an image of each original document and brief historical notes regarding its significance.

Approved by the Continental Congress, 2 July 1776

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
Lee Resolution showing congressional vote, July 2, 1776; Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774-1783; Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789, Record Group 360; National Archives.

Richard Henry Lee penned these words per instructions “to declare the United Colonies free and independent states, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence upon the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain” (as quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, “Prelude to Independence: The Virginia Resolutions of May 15, 1776,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series 8 [1951], 488). Lee introduced his resolution 7 June, which was seconded by John Adams, and Congress adopted the resolution 2 July 1776.

The Virginia Resolutions were read in the Continental Congress 27 June, a Committee formed for drafting the Declaration reported the next day, and the Declaration of Independence itself was adopted 4 July.

Efforts to assess the significance of the Lee Resolution have included assertions that “Independence Day was properly the day on which Congress passed the resolution which actually established our independence; and that day was July 2” (Charles Warren, “Fourth of July Myths,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series 2 [1945], 238). A similar spin was put forth in “July 4, 1776, An Imagi-Holiday” at the blog History Is Elementary. She suggests pedagogy of discovery:

Is elementaryhistoryteacher calling for a change in the date for our independence celebrations? No, I’m not. What I am calling for is greater effort on the part of those who teach social studies to know their content concerning myth versus fact and share that information with students. Throw out some teasers to students, provide them with the materials, and let them discover how we decided the 4th instead of the 2nd would be our “Epoch” or Independence Day.

She also provides a link to the History News Network’s “Top 5 Myths about the Fourth of July.” Myth #1 is that the United States declared its independence on July 4. The HNN staff writers explain, “America's independence was actually declared by the Continental Congress on July 2, 1776.”

A reader of History Is Elementary offered a cautionary note regarding claims that the “wrong” day is celebrated every summer, highlighting the crux of Independence:

Liberty, self-determination, the franchise and the founding of a glorious Republic. That, at least, is what I celebrate on the fourth day of July.
pbuxton, “comment”

Patriots and Peoples

A Patriot’s History of the United States by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen offers John Adams’ language that “Congress has passed the most important resolution … ever taken in America” (ellipses in original, Schweikart and Allen, 80). The footnote identifies their source for Adams’ words as a secondary source: Page Smith, John Adams, 1735-1784, vol 1 (1962). The previous paragraph mentions that delegates to the Continental Congress were instructed to support independence; it highlights the leadership role of Virginia through the colony establishing a republican government in June.

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States does not specifically mention the Lee Resolution. There is an allusion to the action where he notes, the Continental Congress “organized a committee to draw up the Declaration of Independence . . . It was adopted by the Congress on July 2, and officially proclaimed on July 4, 1776” (Zinn, 71). The next paragraph discusses precedents in resolutions adopted in North Carolina two months earlier, and quotes from one adopted by Malden, Massachusetts.

Voices of a People’s History, edited by Zinn and Anthony Arnove offers that “[a]t least ninety state and local declarations of independence” were issued in the months leading up to July 1776. This information is part of the headnote to “New York Mechanics Declaration of Independence” proclaimed 29 May 1776 (86-87).

The narrative focus through this section in both A Patriot’s History and A People’s History moves from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to the Declaration of Independence.