• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. trump administration>

Ill-informed patriotism

Lawrence Goldstone
October 27, 2022
Donald Trump

That Donald Trump has become a rallying point for the working class "could not be more of an irony," writes Goldstone.

Mark Lyons/Getty Images

Goldstone’s most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights.

Not uncommon these days is to see a pickup truck driving around with a giant American flag flying from one side of the tailgate and an equal-sized Gadsden flag, which depicts a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase “Don’t Tread On Me,” from the other. Another frequent sight is a bumper sticker or window decal featuring some variation of Tom Paine’s famous quote decrying the “sunshine patriot.”

Other variations abound, all evoking the good old days during and after the Revolutionary War, when citizen soldiers were valued patriots, freedom reigned and the heavy boot of oppressive government was not planted on working people’s throats. That most of those proclaiming these sentiments are fervent supporters of Donald Trump and the Trumpublican Party is not at all a coincidence.

That Trump, an amoral narcissistic profiteer, has become a rallying point for the working class — which he has spent the better part of his life disparaging, stiffing out of money and swindling — could not be more of an irony. If his working-class supporters had spent some time learning what actually transpired during the Revolutionary period they are evoking with such nostalgia, they might decide that their loyalties would be better directed elsewhere.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter


Today’s right-wing patriots are correct that it was their class — yeoman farmers, artisans, and other ordinary people ... many of whom were immigrants — that was the backbone of the Continental Army, without whom George Washington and other leaders would have had no one to fight alongside. They froze and starved at Valley Forge, left bloody footprints in the snow on the trek to cross the Delaware, and abandoned their farms and families, sometimes for years, in the pursuit of the freedom, liberty and prosperity that had been promised to them.

And how were these often unpaid heroes treated by the leaders of a grateful nation when they came home to find themselves burdened by crushing debt and their property in ruins?

Abysmally.

The war had ignited a severe financial crisis in which a good deal of fertile land had been rendered unusable to farmers, British markets had been closed off, British shippers were prohibited from buying American-built ships, the war debt was immense, and the gold and silver required to pay off most individual debt was in extremely short supply. As a result, the gross national product plummeted while foreclosures and sentences to debtors’ prisons skyrocketed. Many of those impacted were army veterans, destitute despite being promised both back pay and pensions by some of the very people now taking their land.

To restore state treasuries, massive tax increases were introduced and the nation soon descended into creditor and debtor classes, neither of which had anything good to say about the other, especially when creditors resisted debtors' calls to issue paper money to ease repayment. Paper money would, of course, depreciate the value of the underlying currency, but would allow many indebted farmers to maintain title to their land.

To the debtors, opponents of paper money were “flint-hearted misers who were lying in wait to buy our lands [at auction] for less than a quarter of their real value.” Creditors saw debtors as having brought their misfortune on themselves through indolence, sloth and the willingness to live “upon the sweat of their neighbors’ brows.”

Massachusetts came to epitomize the nation’s divide. On the Atlantic Coast lay Boston and the prosperous, cosmopolitan, mercantile East, where shippers such as John Hancock and James Bowdoin, two extremely rich speculators with egos to match — the Donald Trumps of post-revolutionary America — grew wealthier by the day. Inland, away from the ports, was the agrarian West, where gruff, laconic, debt-ridden farmers — the pickup truck owners — were regularly hauled into court to be deprived of their land or sent to prison.

Gov. Bowdoin ignored the westerners’ plea to issue paper money. (He and Hancock handed the governorship back and forth for the entire decade.) Bowdoin, unwilling to part with a cent, had no intention of adopting a monetary system that would effectively write down debts by as much as 90 percent.

Finally, in June 1786, the westerners’ frustrations boiled over and some took up arms against the ruling elite. They initially confined themselves to shutting down courthouses to prevent creditors from pressing claims but soon grew to what seemed a formidable force, determined to overthrow a state government they saw as a tool of the rich. A similar protest began in neighboring New Hampshire and threatened to spread to other states where debt was crushing yeoman farmers and other artisans.

After Congress refused to bankroll a military response, Bowdoin and his fellow creditors approached Massachusetts-born Benjamin Lincoln, a Continental Army general turned land speculator. Lincoln “went immediately to a club of the first characters in Boston, who met that night and suggested to them the importance of becoming loaners of a part of their property if they wished to secure the remainder.” The plea, described as “very persuasive,” garnered more than £6,000 in a week.

By the end of January 1787, the leading coastal merchants had contributed enough to fund an army of 3,000 to march against less than 1,500 poorly armed rebels, now known as Shays Men for Daniel Shays, a 49-year-old former captain in the Continental Army who had fought at Bunker Hill and Lexington and Concord.

After a disastrous battle at a federal arsenal in Springfield, where the rebels had hoped to supplement their meager supply of arms, Lincoln’s force ran down the stragglers and by the end of February it was all over. Some rebels were jailed, a few hanged, and the rest disarmed and sent home. Shays himself fled to Vermont, which, not yet in the Union, was technically a foreign country.

In the end, Shays’ Rebellion had not amounted to much. Nevertheless, the prospect of an armed uprising terrified both the creditor class in the North and the plantation class in South, where rebellious farmers might also incite slave revolt. The growing unrest emphasized the need for a stronger national government to prevent wholesale insurrection.

And so, nationalists such as Madison, Hamilton, and John Dickinson were able to persuade Congress to call a national convention, set for May in Philadelphia, to strengthen the fatally weak Articles of Confederation. What they produced not only introduced a bit of democracy — only the upper classes had any real say in choosing the nation’s leaders — but also empowered the government to put down another populist uprising, should one arise.

And so, those who wish so ardently for a return to the good old days might bear in mind that, like the Trump crowd, the Bowdoins and Hancocks also made grandiose promises to those who contributed the most and were recompensed the least. Those promises were broken, as Trump and his ilk’s surely will be as well.

From Your Site Articles
  • If Trumpism is here to stay, we need to go back to basics - The Fulcrum ›
  • Capitol riot reminiscent of Mussolini's march on Rome - The Fulcrum ›
  • Video: A Trump Supporter Interviews a Biden Supporter - The Fulcrum ›
  • President Trump? How about Don Donald? ›
  • Seven Days in March - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Donald Trump's Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat ... ›
  • Donald Trump's Supporters, and Why They Love Him ›
  • Capitol riots timeline: What happened on 6 January 2021? - BBC ... ›
  • Paul Ryan Reality-Checks Donald Trump Supporters With A Stark ... ›
  • Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters? - The Atlantic ›
trump administration

Join an Upcoming Event

Building A Global Culture of Peace

Mediators Beyond Borders International
Oct 02, 2023 at 2:00 pm EDT
Read More

STAR Voting California Monthly Meeting

Equal Vote
Oct 02, 2023 at 6:00 pm PDT
Read More

Artificial Intelligence

Living Room Conversations
Oct 03, 2023 at 5:00 pm MDT
Read More

Post Covid: The Unequal State of Health in America

USC Center for the Political Future
Oct 04, 2023 at 4:00 pm UTC-7
Read More

Learning Community Gathering

Living Room Conversations
Oct 04, 2023 at 4:30 pm PDT
Read More

Democracy Happy Hour

Fix Democracy First
Oct 04, 2023 at 5:00 pm PDT
Read More
View All Events

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Dave Anderson

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Stephen E. Herbits

Conservatives attacking Americans’ First Amendment rights

Steve Corbin

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff
latest News

America’s greatest resource- Education

William Natbony
23h

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Ken Powley
23h

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Priya Iyer
28 September

Advancing human rights, worldwide

Leland R. Beaumont
28 September

How statelessness gambles with the lives of American families

Samantha Sitterly
27 September

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September

Podcast: The MAGA Bubble, Bidenonmics and Playing the Victim

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
12 September
Recommended
America’s greatest resource- Education

America’s greatest resource- Education

Big Picture
Grand Canyon gap in America today

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Elections
The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Big Picture
There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Big Picture
Advancing human rights, worldwide

Advancing human rights, worldwide

Big Picture
Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Big Picture