ATfter the invasion of the Capitol, the dumbfounded world wonders how the country which has long presented itself as the leader of the “free” world could have fallen so low. To understand what happened, it is urgent to step out of myths and idolatry, and return to history. In reality, the American Republic has been crossed since its inception by considerable fragility, violence and inequality.
Emblem of the slave South during the civil war of 1861-1865, the Confederate flag waved a few days ago by rioters in the heart of the Federal Parliament was not there by chance. It refers to very heavy conflicts that must be faced.
The slave system has played a central role in the development of the United States, as indeed of Western industrial capitalism as a whole. Of the fifteen presidents who succeeded one another until Lincoln’s election in 1860, no less than eleven were slave owners, including Washington and Jefferson, both natives of Virginia, which in 1790 had 750,000 inhabitants (including 40 % of slaves), or the equivalent of the combined population of the two most populous northern states (Pennsylvania and Massachusetts).
After the revolt of 1791 in Santo Domingo (a French colonial jewel and the first concentration of slaves in the Atlantic world at the time), the South of the United States became the world heart of the plantation economy and experienced accelerated expansion. The number of slaves quadruple between 1800 and 1860; cotton production increases tenfold and feeds the European textile industry. But the Northeast and especially the Midwest (where Lincoln is from) are developing even faster. These two groups are based on another economic model, based on the colonization of western lands and free labor, and want to block the expansion of slavery in the new territories.
600,000 dead
After his victory in 1860, the Republican Lincoln was ready to negotiate a peaceful and gradual end to the slavers, with compensation for the owners, as happened during the British and French abolitions of 1833 and 1848. But the Southerners preferred to try the card of secession, like part of the white settlers of South Africa and Algeria in the XXe century, to try to preserve their world. The Northerners refused to leave, and the war began in 1861.
Four years later, and after 600,000 deaths (as much as the cumulative total of all other conflicts in which the country has participated, including the world wars, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq), the conflict ends. with the surrender of the Confederate armies in May 1865.
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