The Doctrine of Discovery Dominates Western Thinking

Three hundred years after the Doctrine of Discovery was published, its ideas about White Male Euro dominance provided justification for the thinking behind the formulation of the American Constitution. It provided a way forward for rule by landowning white men. Brown people had become thoroughly reduced to secondary human beings. The Founding Fathers had been conditioned by the Pope’s Doctrine for western culture. There was no other proposal for them to take seriously. By 1860 and the War Between the States, there was no assumption that Black Africans were truly equal to white men except among the most radical thinkers. The most accepted idea for freeing slaves was based on commerce. Not paying people for their work in the South gave the South an advantage over the North and perpetuated a different kind of society, an undemocratic one like Europe where a born nobility - great landowners - governed the lives of commoners. The idea has continued currency among some even in 2021 Edward Alfred Pollard of Richmond published a book in 1872 entitled The Lost Cause, which condemned black people to second class status even after the Confederacy lost the war, and proclaimed the superiority of white men descended from European ancestors. His thinking found widespread acceptance especially by white politicians like Benjamin Ryan Tillman, Governor and later Senator from South Carolina who led a band of Red Shirts––a band of pre-KKK––organized to kill and terrorize Blacks, especially if they had political ambitions that might lead to equality with whites. More about Tillman tomorrow.