Nick’s Reviews > These Truths: A History of the United States > Status Update

And a nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history.

The American experiment had not ended. A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos. A nation founded on universal rights will wrestle against the forces of particularism. A nation that toppled a hierarchy of birth only to erect a hierarchy of wealth will never know tranquility. A nation of immigrants cannot close its borders.

King, indicted for violating the state's antiboycott law, said, "If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them."

When Walter Lippmann turned thirty-two, he wrote a book called "Public Opinion", in which he concluded...the masses...had been asked to do too much...Mass democracy can't work, Lippmann argued, because the new tools of mass persuasion - especially mass advertising - meant that a tiny minority could very easily persuade the majority to believe whatever it wished them to believe.

"My dear young friends," Douglass closed. "Accept the inspiration of hope. Imitate the example of the brave mariner, who, amid clouds and darkness, amid hail, rain and storm bolts, battles his way against all that the sea opposes to his progress and you will reach the goal of your noble ambition in safety."

American slavery had lasted for centuries. It had stolen the lives of millions and crushed the souls of millions more. It had cut down children, stricken mothers, and broken men. It had poisoned a people and a nation. It had turned hearts to stone. It had made eyes blind. It had left gaping wounds and terrible scars. It was not over yet. But at last, at last, an end lay within sight.

Theodore Parker, a thirty-six-year-old Unitarian minister who had just returned from a tour of Europe, called on Americans to abolish slavery and disavow conquest. "Abroad we are looked on as a nation of swindlers and men-stealers!" he cried. "And what can we say in our defense? Alas, the nation is a traitor to its great idea - that all men are born equal, each with the same inalienable rights."

The United States was not founded as Christian nation. The constitution prohibits religious tests for officeholders. The Bill of Rights forbids the federal government from establishing a religion, James Madison having argued that to establish a religion would be "to foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits."

He considered a source of instability particular to a large republic: the people might be deceived. "The larger a country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained," he explained. That is, factions might not, in the end, consist of wise, knowledgeable, and reasonable men. They might consist of passionate, ignorant, and irrational men, who had been led to hold "counterfeit" opinions by persuasive men.

Writing in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he offered an attack on slavery, signing his essay "Hisoricus - the voice of history." He died two weeks later. He was the only man to have signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution. His last public act was to urge abolition. Congress would not hear of it.