The Pervading Deconstructionism: Abolition of Custom and Elevation of Men

After the long and laborious journey of establishing its distinctive government structure, the nascent U.S. government settled into its new phase in 1815. During this period, Americans sought what is beyond the term ‘democracy’: they wanted to define it, expand it, and apply it to their lives. Such pursuits acted as a nationwide shift to knock on the door of democracy and revisit its political, religious, and socioeconomic identity. Politically, democratization emerged and advocated for the people’s will and majority rule. Named the ‘Heir of Jefferson,’ President Andrew Jackson rode on the tide and strived to represent the people and restrict the federal government’s power. In a religious part of American life, the Second Great Awakening emerged, underscoring the believers’ involvement in the faith and rejection of ceremony, clerical authority, and customs. The growing emphasis on human capacity in religion induced the Americans to believe they could eradicate vices from the world and triggered various social movements and reformations. In the socioeconomic realm, the reawakened sense of religious virtue and democracy influenced the notion of Manifest Destiny: a God-given duty for white Americans to spread Christianity and white civilization. Through their territorial expansion to the West, Americans hoped to spread democracy to tyrannical Catholicism and savage civilizations. Thus, in those three aspects, democratization and deconstructionism of established authority pervaded. 

During the early 19th century, the American government underwent rapid democratization as President Jackson and the Democrats took control. Jackson wrote his First Annual Message to expand the people’s rights, criticize the current ‘undemocratic’ election process, and minimize government intervention. He emphasized the majority rule as the first principle of the American foundation and recommended a democratic alteration to the Constitution. Jackson even wrote “remov[ing] all intermediate agency in the election of the President and Vice President” as proper (287). Since he lost in the 1824 presidential election despite the popular opinion favoring him, he sought to restore the people’s rights and power for direct election. He believed that public offices were created for the people and that people had the utmost right to elect whatever individual they wanted. Jackson’s speech likewise underscored the reserved federal government and indifferent public officers, opposing the legislative branch’s dominance over the majority’s will. On the other hand, Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America suggested the danger of American democratization. He warned that democracy is essentially the tyranny of the majority. Unlike Jackson, who perceived the legislative power as a hindrance to the majority’s will, Tocqueville saw the legislative branch as easily swayed by the quick-changing minds of the people. Then, he questioned the basic idea of popular government—that the majority holds superior intelligence—and pointed out how tyrannical the popular government is. Absolute monarchy represses the adversaries physically, yet they cannot repress the persecuted ones’ thoughts, but in popular democracy, the majority pushes their adversaries to mental persecution that the minority does not last but to conform. In the era of rapid democratization, Jackson and Tocqueville conveyed distinct insights and stances about the deconstruction of federalism and the augmentation of the majority rule. 

Simultaneously, the Second Great Awakening altered American religious life by emphasizing the equality of the believers and the deconstruction of pre-established authorities. Lorenzo Dow’s History of Cosmopolite introduced Dow’s anecdotes about conversions and insights to appreciate the Second Great Awakening. He recounted several personal conversions that some non-believers went through and explained about the ‘jerks,’ a personal spiritual experience people received in the conversion process. Dow conveyed the idea of equality of conversion as he explained that the “jerk” and the personal conversion occurred regardless of people’s denomination, gender, age, and race. He also claimed that the people had as much right to judge by their free will and not confined by the domineering customs. Dow called the papal authority ‘barbarous’ as it was only a ceremony pretending to be a sovereign authority; he believed that the universal right of all believers to personally communicate with God was the essence of religion. Contrastingly, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a satirical fiction, Earth’s Holocaust, to attack such pervasive overlooking of ‘customs’ and authorities. He demonstrated the folly and madness of the radical Second Great Awakening, which tried to abolish all ‘superficial’ customs. In his book, people decide to preserve the essence only and throw liquor, books, laws, money, etc., into a gigantic fire under the name of reformation. Ultimately, the people end up throwing the Bible itself into the fire. Through this metaphor, Hawthorne warned how the Second Great Awakening’s vane pursuit of essence and destruction of ceremony would result in the loss of the essence itself. The widespread movement of the Second Great Awakening was extolled by many but also cautioned by others for the danger of radically deconstructing the pre-established authority. 

Inspired by such trending augmentation of human capacity from the Second Great Awakening, nineteenth-century America developed a unique idea of Manifest Destiny and thus expanded its territory westward. In the process of westward expansion, the American settlers had to deal with indigenous tribes and Mexicans who were the owners and dwellers of the territories. Letter from the Alamo, written by Lieutenant-Colonel William Travis, displayed the hazardous battles in the West and the American determination to spread and maintain liberty and democratic values. Americans justified the expansion to the West as the God-given mission—Manifest Destiny—to spread the values of democracy and white civilization. Lieutenant-Colonel Travis wrote in his letter about the unsafe situation he was confronting in the war but also emphasized the determination to persevere for his fatherland. Likewise, Benton conveyed the sentiment of Manifest Destiny and its racial justification in The Destiny of the Race. While Letter from the Alamo was more centered upon the unceasing passion for patriotism, liberty, and victory, The Destiny of the Race stressed the racial superiority of the White race and its divine mission to spread advanced ideologies and technologies. Benton claimed that the White race was superior to any other race since it flourished and conquered more than any other race. He thus justified the other races’ extinction as the consequence of unconformity to the excellence of the White race. As such, both the Letter from Alamo and The Destiny of the Race praised and justified the westward expansion and Manifest Destiny.

Although democratization, the Second Great Awakening, and the westward expansion were movements from three disparate areas, they shared a common essence: deconstruction of the existing order and shift of power to men. Jackson’s emphasis on the power of the majority’s will, Dow’s resentment of superficial customs in religions, and Travis and Benton’s passion for men’s capability and mission all added up to create the general atmosphere of the era. This era of democratization and expansion sought to abolish the pre-existing authorities—the federal government, religious customs, and territorial boundaries—and elevated men themselves to replace them. Men alone were now the subject of all political decisions, the active priests and world-changers, and the conquerors and educators of other races. Authors like Tocqueville and Hawthorne wrote their pieces warning about such emergence of homocentric and antiauthoritarian sentiment. During the tumultuous era of redefining American identity and national directions, the ideas of deconstructionism and the elevation of men’s will diffused through political, religious, and socioeconomic aspects of American life, inspiring many and menacing others.