Elections Have Consequences: 1844 and 2020

James K. Polk, the 11^th President, was born on November 2, 1795. As mentioned in my Oct. 30 post, Polk’s 125^th birthday anniversary in 1920 was the day when Warren G. Harding celebrated his 55^th birthday—and was also elected the 29^th POTUS.

Polk, elected in November 1844, was a successful President. His four years in office clearly indicates that elections have consequences—as they all do. 

Polk: One of the Best Presidents?

Presidential historian Andrew Bergen ranks Polk as the seventh best President of the first 43 in the history of the U.S. (see here). That is higher than what is found in most rankings, but Polk is regularly ranked in the top one-third. And yet, he is not widely known—although ten states have a county named for James Polk.

(Polk County, Missouri, where June was born and where we were married, was named after James’s grandfather. And now we live in Clay County, Mo., named after Henry Clay, whom Polk defeated in the election of 1844. My 4/20/17 blog post was titled “The Feats of [Henry] Clay,” and mentions his loss to Polk.)

Harry Truman summed up Polk’s legacy in these words: “James K. Polk, a great President. Said what he intended to do and did it.” Accordingly, Bergen states, “Polk followed through on every single campaign pledge that he ran on in 1844,” and that included not running for re-election.  

Election Consequences of 1844

But Polk’s “successful” presidency doesn’t mean that we should broadly praise him. Rather, there is much that should be denounced. Elections have consequences, and those consequences from the 1844 election were not good for many people in the U.S.

Polk is regarded as a protégé of Andrew Jackson, instigator of the deplorable Indian Removal Act of 1830, and that is one reason the consequences of the election of 1844 were not good for many. He was a strong advocate of “manifest destiny” (a term coined in 1845) that resulted in the extermination of many Native Americans.

Further, the annexation of Texas, which he strongly supported, was linked to the strengthening of slavery in the U.S., for annexation gave slavery room to expand. Subsequently, one indirect consequence of Polk’s election was the Civil War, which started just twelve years after his presidency ended.

Election Consequences of 2020?

The guest host on the Nov. 9 Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC kept repeating the words “radical normalcy” with reference to President-elect Joe Biden. That is one of the hoped-for consequences of this month’s election—a reversal of the abnormalities I wrote about in my 10/30 post and that this very lengthy WaPo Magazine article details.

Just as he promised, President-elect Biden has already set up a panel of experts to draw up plans on how best to find ways to control the covid-19 pandemic. And as an indication of the “radical normalcy” in that move, there were no family members or cronies selected for the team.

As a Nov. 9 WaPo article says, Biden’s appointed task force is “a group made up entirely of doctors and health experts, signaling his intent to seek a science-based approach to bring the raging pandemic under control.” This will surely lead to one very positive consequence of the Nov. 3 election.

Further, according to this Nov. 11 WaPo article, another encouraging consequence of the recent election is how “Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change.”

Of course, some evangelical Christians see negative consequences resulting from the election. For example, on Nov. 10, a conservative Christian Post reporter declared, “Biden planning to reverse Trump’s pro-life policies by executive order.”

It remains to be seen, of course, what all the consequences of the 2020 presidential election will be. I am hoping for, and expect, mostly positive ones that will, indeed, help save the soul of the nation.

The Deplorable Doctrine of Discovery

Even though it dates back to 1452, until fairly recently I had never heard of the Doctrine of Discovery (DofD)—and perhaps most Americans are largely unaware of that deplorable doctrine. Please think with me now about what the DofD is and why it is so deplorable.  

The Basis of the DofD

In June 1452, Nicholas V, the Catholic Pope (reigned 1447~55), issued a papal bull (public decree) under the title Dum Diversas. It primarily authorized King Afonso V of Portugal to conquer and subjugate Muslims and “pagans.”

Specifically, the Pope granted the Portuguese king permission

to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Arab Muslims] and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, . . . and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery . . . .

As it was issued less than a year before the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the bull may have been intended to begin another crusade against the Ottoman Empire. (The crusade did not develop, however, and the capital of the Roman Empire established in 330 fell to the Turks and the Empire ended.)

The papal bull, however, was used by Portugal to begin taking slaves from Africa and then for subjugating indigenous people in the “new world.”

The DofD and Manifest Destiny

Some who have recently written about the Doctrine of Discovery say that it is so deplorable because of its use to subjugate and oppress Native Americans in what is now the USA.

The mistreatment of Natives by the Spanish in what is now Texas and the southwest part of the U.S. and the same sort of mistreatment by the French in Florida and Louisiana was, no doubt, partly because of the Doctrine of Discovery.

But those parts of the U.S. were then incorporated in various ways into the U.S. by a government almost completely controlled by WASPS who were opponents of Catholicism.

The Puritans were Christians in England who sought to purify the Church of England from Catholic practices, and after coming to “New England,” they sought to do in the “new world” what they couldn’t do in England.

The Puritan attitude toward the Native people, however, was very similar to that expressed in the Doctrine of Discovery, and from 1630 on, the spirit of triumphal conquest found in the DofD was later justified by the concept of Manifest Destiny.

It was under the overarching idea of Manifest Destiny that the Natives of North America were abused and exploited in much the same way that the indigenous peoples of Central and South America had been subjugated by conquistadors from Catholic countries based on the DofD .

The intention of both the Doctrine of Discovery and of Manifest Destiny was to subject Indigenous peoples to the rule of white European and/or Anglo-Saxon “Christians.”

What Can We Do Now?

Perhaps the first task is to learn about how terribly destructive the implementation of the Doctrine of Discovery and of Manifest Destiny was for Native Americans.

There are Christians who have in recent years been writing about the evils of the DofD. Mennonite Church USA, for example,  has since 2014 been working on resources for “dismantling” the DofD. (Check out their DofD website here.)

In 2016 the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) responded to a 68-page report on the DofD by repudiating the Doctrine, labeling it as heresy and lamenting the pain it has caused.

Mark Charles

One of the authors of the CRC report is Mark Charles, who is half Native American and half Dutch American. He and Soong-Chan Rah are the authors of a book on the subject I highly recommend: Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery (Nov. 2019). 

The authors conclude that “our only path to healing is through lament and learning how to accept some very unsettling truths” (p. 206).  

But in addition to learning and lamenting, surely there is a need for confessing, repenting, apologizing, and determining to engage with others in seeking to dismantle the deplorable Doctrine of Discovery.

What will you do?

* * * * *

Addendum

In the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2010, of all things, there is an apology to the Native Americans in the U.S.  Section 8113 of that Act, which was passed into law by Congress in Dec. 2009, states

that the United States, acting through Congress: (1) recognizes that there have been years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the federal government regarding Indian tribes; (2) apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted upon them by U.S. citizens; (3) urges the President to acknowledge such wrongs; and (4) commends state governments that have begun reconciliation efforts and encourages all state governments to work toward reconciling their relationships with Indian tribes within their boundaries.

Unfortunately, that apology received hardly any press coverage and was largely overlooked by the President. (Charles & Rah discuss this matter on pages 190~4 of Unsettling Truths.)

Lewis & Clark Expedition: The Good and the Bad

For several weeks I have wanted to think with you about the impressive feats of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. It was 215 years ago in June that they first passed through what is now Kansas City, not far from where I live. Most of their long, dangerous journey was still ahead, though, and what a remarkable journey it was! 

Lewis & Clark Statue at Kaw Point, Kan. (one of my favorite places in Kansas City)

The Corps of Discovery

I had long mistakenly thought that Lewis & Clark’s expedition, which began in May 1804, was a direct result of the huge Louisiana Purchase realized when the U.S. signed a purchase treaty with France in April 1803.

(The Louisiana territory purchased was about 827,000 square miles. Some wonder if part of DJT’s recently reported desire to buy Greenland, which is more than 836,000 sq. mi., isn’t partly due to his desire to claim to have made the largest land purchase in U.S. history.)

Soon after Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he employed Meriwether Lewis as his personal secretary. By the next year, Jefferson was talking with Lewis about the possibility of him leading an expedition from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

Lewis (1774~1809) was making definite plans and assembling equipment necessary for such an expedition prior to the Louisiana Purchase, although the latter gave great impetus to implementing that treacherous journey.

In July 1803, William Clark (1770~1838) accepted Lewis’s invitation to become co-captain of the expedition, which came to be called the Corps of Discovery.

The next year on May 14, the Corps started up the Missouri River from the St. Louis area, beginning their long, dangerous trek to the Pacific Ocean. There were about 30 men who started this journey, including York, Clark’s personal black slave.

Positive Results

There were certainly many positive results of the Lewis and Clark Expedition—especially for white men like the expedition’s leaders and the President who dispatched them.

To cite “Lewis and Clark’s Historical Impact,” an online article, the expedition produced an accurately mapped route to the Pacific Ocean, introduced Americans and Europeans to hundreds of varieties of plants and animals, and opened up new territory for the fur and lumber trade.

Overall, it “allowed a young country to blossom into greatness.” Thus, there “is no doubt that the expedition of Lewis and Clark forever changed the course of the country’s history.”

Negative Results

The Introduction of a website titled “Origins of the Ideology of Manifest Destiny” begins, “The most influential ideology in our nation’s history is manifest destiny.”

It seems quite evident that the Lewis & Clark Expedition furthered that ideology. Although the term manifest destiny was not coined until 1845, the core belief that USAmericans were destined by God to reign over the entire continent seems to have been in the minds of the founders of the U.S.—and in the mind of President Jefferson.

Although Lewis and Clark did not seem to have any harsh or oppressive views of the American Indians they encountered, nevertheless, their expedition resulted in harsh and oppressive treatment of the Native Peoples for most of the 19^th century.

A bicentennial article in Teaching Tolerance emphasizes that while “American history tends to eulogize what Lewis and Clark ‘found’ on their 7,400-mile journey,” for Native Americans “the story instead is about what was lost—lives, land, languages and freedom.”

In the same article, a Native American named BlueHorse lamented, “Within 100 years of Lewis and Clark passing through here, every Native nation they encountered”—and there were about 50 of them—“was displaced from their traditional lands and put on reservations.”

What, I wonder, can be done now to mitigate the highly negative results still remaining from Lewis and Clarks’ nation-changing expedition that began 215 years ago?