West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War

by Heather Cox Richardson

the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s brought this same paradox to the fore in modern American political rhetoric. It gives us antigovernment rhetoric from the South and western plains, regions that receive far more in federal aid than they pay in taxes. At the same time, the Northeast and West Coast support government activism although they receive back from the national government considerably less money than they pay in. In 2003, for example, taxpayers in Mississippi received a federal outlay of $1.83 for every dollar of federal tax they paid, while taxpayers from Massachusetts saw only $.78 come back to the state for every dollar they gave to Uncle Sam. Yet in 2004, Mississippi voters spoke firmly against government activism and Massachusetts voters spoke strongly in favor of it. Clearly there is a stark regional contrast in American thought between the reality of government activism and Americans’ image of it.

this mindset deliberately repressed anyone who called for government action to level the American economic, social, or political playing field. If a group as a whole came to be perceived as looking for government handouts its members were aggressively prohibited from participating equally in American society, and all of the self-help in the world wasn’t going to change that. This middle-class vision also limited women’s role in society by basing their power on their positions as wives and mothers, not as independent, equal individuals. The powerful new American identity permitted many individuals to succeed far beyond what they might have achieved elsewhere, but that exceptional openness depended on class, gender, and racial bias. The political contours of this division have changed over the decades, but the divided vision of the nation is still a potent part of Americans’ current mindset. It was certainly part of the 2004 electoral puzzle that made the red states, with their large government subsidies, vote so vehemently against what they perceived as government aid to “special interests.’’ And red staters who trumpet America’s greatness as a land of opportunity are right: the American ideology is truly great. This mindset is also, though, what made blue staters vote for a government that would level the economic, social, and political playing fields between diffierent groups. The blue staters, too, are right; America has serious systematic inequalities embedded in its so...

People who identified themselves as members of a working class seemed alien to those who did not, for increasingly they dressed, spoke, spent free time, and voted diffierently than those Americans—from beginning workers to established businessmen—who still believed anyone could rise to economic success through hard work alone. Organizing workers explicitly attacked the growing idea that postwar liberty meant only the freedom of individuals to enter into contracts. Forced to take grueling work that paid pennies, they recognized that wage laborers’ “liberty of contract” could not be free when they were desperate for work to stave o? starvation, and they called for government intervention in the economy to bolster workers’ position.

Pulitzer identified what he called “true democracy” as the guiding force of his paper and of the age. “True democracy,” he wrote, “recognizes the millionaire and the railroad magnate as just as good as any other man and as fully entitled to protection for his property under the law. But true democracy will not sanction the swallowing up of liberty by property any more than the swallowing up of property by communism.’’

In the 1880s, middle-class Americans consolidated their identity around the idea that individuals could rise on their own through hard work. Increasingly, this vision took its contours from popular perceptions of life in the West, where, it seemed, everyone was welcome if only they were willing to put their shoulder to the wheel. This middle-class vision appeared to be inclusive, welcoming African Americans and anyone who embraced these values. At the same time, it explicitly excluded anyone who seemed to belong to a group that argued that there were class interests in society that must be addressed by government. “The mass” of African Americans, labor activists, and activist women were excluded from this mainstream acceptance. It did not matter that Ida B. Wells was a productive, upwardly mobile member of society; she was not welcome to participate equally in society so long as she tried to get the government to protect her right to do so. Mainstream Americans perceived government activism as bowing to those who wanted extra privileges rather than as an attempt to guarantee the same rights to all. This fear, too, was encouraged by increasing attention to the West, where government was hated as a tool of Republicans, businessmen, and special interests. Paradoxically, though, part of the individualist vision included a homemaking wife, who was increasingly calling for activist government to protect her ability to care for her family. Tucked neatly within the middle-class di...

in December 1888, President Cleveland delivered a stinging annual message that sought to recall Americans to their true heritage. He told them that they should be devoted to American citizenship for its own sake and for the nation’s advancement, not for “selfish greed and grasping avarice.’’ He mourned, “the Government, instead of being the embodiment of equality, is but an instrumentality through which especial and individual advantages are to be gained…. The arrogance of this assumption is unconcealed. It appears in the sordid disregard of all but personal interests, in the refusal to abate for the benefit of others one iota of selfish advantage, and in combinations to perpetuate such advantages through effiorts to control legislation and improperly influence the suffrages of the people.’’ There would be a reckoning, he warned. Farmers, laborers, and consumers would insist on fairness. “Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government,” he said, “but the communism of combined wealth and capital … is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil.”

Americans’ dislike of “special interests” controlling government has meant that twentieth-century politics have swung between, on one hand, opposition to businessmen controlling government and, on the other, a dislike of those laborers, immigrants, advocates for women’s rights, and minority activists who call for government protection. During the Progressive Era, the Depression, and the sixties and seventies, Americans protested the businessmen who unfairly stacked the economic deck in their own favor through ties to the government. In these eras, Americans created legislation to protect individuals, disdained business leaders, emphasized government corruption, and worked to curb the power of the wealthy. In the twenties, the fifties, and the conservative revolution of the late twentieth century the pendulum swung the other way, as middle-class Americans argued that the poor refused to work, that calls for women’s rights threatened the fabric of society, and that “liberals” calling for legislation to address racial, economic, and gender inequalities were attacking the individualism that made America great.

Reagan’s promises of fairness and small government meant cuts to social programs, but his administration poured federal money into defense contracts offiered to favored businessmen. In addition, much like Wister’s Virginian, or like the Wyoming cattlemen on whom the Virginian was patterned, Reagan skirted the law to do what he thought was right. Congressional legislation prohibiting aid to the Nicaraguan Contras fighting the leftist Sandinista government in that country did not stop Reagan’s men from making a Wild West decision to spread “American values” overseas.

But the image of the American cowboy has always had two sides. It contains the great hope of American equality of opportunity, of a world where anyone can rise and where no one has special privileges. But it also contains the deliberate repression of anyone identifying racial, gender, or economic inequalities in society, as well as a dangerously self-righteous expansionism. Both sides of the cowboy represent America; both define our nation.