In 1858, a slaveholder put it this way: the upper class should rest on the lower classes the same way a stately edifice rested on “mudsills”—timbers driven into the ground for support. That mudsill vision of the world stood against a very different set of principles that lay at the heart of American democracy: equality and self-determination. Those who embraced this vision believed that society moved forward because self-reliant individuals produced and innovated far more effectively than a small group of elites, whose wealth insulated them from the need to experiment.
