"Space," for Maury, writes Johnson, shouldn't be limited to the usual concepts of politics, "national" or "regional." Re-imagine, fellow Americans, space as "economy produced space"! In this way of thinking, borders and boundaries disappear and productivity and profits take their place. We flow like a river; we gather unto ourselves what is rightful ours. We project globally, and "the rivertine and maritime geography that defined the Mississippi Valley and the cotton trade" becomes "empire."
Look pass the Mississippi Valley and see our Amazon Valley!
"If ever the vegetation there me subdued and bought under," writes Maury, "if ever the soil be reclaimed from the forest, the reptile and the wild beast, and subjected to the hoe, it must be done by the African, with the American axe in his hand."
Besides, God deemed it so!
Maury's vision spurs others to pursue the profits and power to be had in a global enterprise in which sat the kings of the kingdom: white men of the nonslaveholding class!
Someone like William Walker"
**
In an article by James D. B. DeBow, another visionary, sees Cuba, Haiti and British and French West Indies, writes Johnson, as ideal for Africans, for the "natural history" of Blacks has never changed, he argued, throughout the ages and in "all circumstances." Blacks, DeBow continues, are identifiable only in the "cane fields" as laborers, under the control of their owners. It's their "natural" condition. Blacks flourish in this ordering of the social hierarchy, becoming "civilized and useful" to the American dream. But if emancipated, look out! "'They degenerate back to barbarism.'"
Johnson interprets DeBow as envisioning an image of lazy Blacks who don't work hard enough, if not for their role as enslaved people.
True enough, but the description of Black people as useful only if as enslaved also calls out for narrative re-reinforcements. Maury to DeBow to immediate and future generations of historians: Write, if you are able! Write the narrative warning of the dangers of undead Blacks! On behalf of the brotherhood of victims terrified of the undead, take a stand and unify! More not less Blacks in bondage!
DeBow manages, as Johnson notes, "to convert the economic effects of a series of decisions made by free people, about how to organize their lives and priorities after emancipation into a set of assertion's about race and history." That's a substantial shove of the mega-narrative supporting the cotton plantation system toward a permanent policy.
**
Fleeing oppression is the narrative I learned in Catholic elementary school in the 1950s. The good pilgrims fled the oppressioneconomic and religiousin Europe to pursuit freedom in the New World. Gone would be the centuries of intolerance and aggression. So it's no surprise that by 1823, the US creates a narrative, the Monroe Doctrine, in which it decrees the necessity of "Americans" (white men) to take "by military force if necessary, the transfer of Cuba from Spain to any other imperial power."
While the threat of war is meant to deter England from landing troops in Cuba, it's Spain, a declining Empire, that the US wanted to give the boot to! By 1848, US perseverance seemed to be paying off. When the US-Mexican War ends, writes Johnson, the US, through the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, expanded its territory, gaining "the present-day states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and California."
So the US flexing it's muscles again, to its fellow European colonialists: We are coming! We are coming! We'll set up camps! Settlements! Homes and businesses! Churches. We'll occupy territory!
With greedy masters the economic space, indifference shuts down commonsense debates about how much is too much sugar and too much cotton. Instead, debate centers around the role of the Creole populations in the Central and Caribbean countries. Not that the conquerors cared about the people themselves, no. But rather, the question asked whether or not the Creole population will join the US cause for liberty? Would Spain free its enslaved Black population to fight side-by-side with their former enslavers?
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