Return of John Marshall

The court case of Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. William M’intosh, which was touched on by the previous post, goes beyond its original scope.  At first, the case’s purpose was simply to settle a land dispute.  However, as the case reached the Supreme Court, it ended up becoming a model for the future.  Chief Justice John Marshall describes the Indians as “fierce savages, whose occupation was war.”  He goes on to say that this makes them impossible to govern.  Since they are impossible to govern, according to Marshall, the United States is not actually conquering the Indians.  Instead, they are merely being relieved of their land.  Marshall justifies this by saying that the Indians’ uncivilized nature means that leaving the land in their control is detrimental to the advancement of humanity.  Within a couple paragraphs of the ruling, Marshall has effectively removed the label of “conquest” from the United States’ interactions with the native peoples.  The last post described the implications of using words like “institution” as euphemisms for slavery, and how these labels can fixate entire societies and prevent them from taking action to solve the problem(s) at hand.  Here, there is a converse effect of removing the label.  If pushing native peoples off their land is not considered conquest, which certainly carries with it a negative connotation, it becomes much easier for said actions to increase.  There is no rule or law which prevents them from taking over the native peoples of America.  Without a rule, it can become quite difficult to control peoples’ actions, and, as Marshall says: “Every rule which can be suggested will be found to be attended with great difficulty.”

The Institution of Slavery

While nitpicking at exact words could be considered a nuisance and an annoyance, there are times when specific word choices can have an effect on history.  This can occur whether or not a specific word choice was inadvertent or not.  Specifically, Abraham Lincoln, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, uses an interesting word to describe slavery.  Lincoln refers to slavery as the “institution” as he argues about the difficulty of its removal.  It’s not just Lincoln, though; plenty of documents from this time period refer to slavery as such.  Perhaps the usage of such a description becomes a roadblock in and of itself in the path of emancipation.  The word “institution” implies a permanent and established policy.  It suggests that slavery has been implanted deep into the ground of society, and that it is ever difficult to get rid of it.  In fact, the way this figure is used seems almost like a euphemism.  It feels like Lincoln is cleverly slithering around saying the “slavery” word, that word that carries with it the shame of the entire nation.  It is this “mentality” that fixates the Union.  Slavery becomes the elephant in the room; everyone knows it’s there and that it’s a problem, but no one wants to tackle the idea of fixing it.  This mentality was present even before Lincoln, however, and is expressed in John Marshall’s court ruling in the case of Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. William M’intosh.  Mr. Marshall’s ruling refers to the conquest of native peoples, and seems to suggest that conquest, and slavery, have simply existed and will continue to exist.  His closing comment says it all: “Every rule which can be suggested will be found to be attended with great difficulty.”

In Conclusion...

In his account of the Spaniards’ encounters with native peoples, Howard Zinn points out a number of snap judgments that the Spaniards make when observing Indians’ behaviors.  They use each of these conclusions to justify their actions.  For example, Zinn describes how an Indian chief presented Christopher Columbus with a gold mask.  Columbus concluded that the island must be full of such riches as gold.  His desire for gold drove him to draw even more conclusions.  Zinn quotes Columbus, saying that Columbus thinks the Indians are “naïve and so free with their possessions” (3).  Columbus, instead of remarking on how collaborative Indian society is, opts to put a sinister spin on their behavior.  He describes them as naïve, suggesting that they are gullible; thus, he concludes that it would be easy for him to milk gold out of them.  Columbus, in drawing these misinformed conclusions, set the Indians up for the peril that was to come.  His assumption that the island was filled with gold, coupled with his assumptions that the Indians knew where it was and were willing to get it for him, caused him to set the Indians to work, thinking that he would easily take what he wanted.  When the Indians came back with much less gold than expected, the Spaniards’ expectations blurred their vision of the truth.  The result was brutal; Zinn says that the Indians were killed using terrible methods.  Such punishments were imposed until the vast majority of the Arawaks were wiped out.  This is but one instance in history where quick conclusions have had devastating repercussions for people.  Yet, we continue to assume things every day; Euclidian math itself is based on five postulates.  That doesn’t make assumptions bad, but it does make it harder to accept if an assumption is wrong.