The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

In a May 2018 interview with NPR, Meacham is even more explicit about his reason for writing The Soul of America than he is in the Introduction. The author tells “Fresh Air” host Dave Davies:

The idea came after the terrible events in Charlottesville last August when the neo-Nazis and the Klansmen were demonstrating, and the counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed. And we found ourselves with a president of the United States who seemed unable to condemn neo-Nazis and Klansmen for violating a fundamental part of the American creed. (Davies, Dave. “‘Soul of America’ Makes Sense of Nation’s Present by Examining Its Past.” NPR. 2 May 2018.)

Meacham of course mentions this tragedy in the Introduction, and on rare occasions even mentions President Trump by name. Yet throughout the book, Trump is less the subject of Meacham’s investigation and more its metatext, lurking underneath the author’s narrative of the battle over America’s soul. For example, whenever Meacham quotes a particularly unifying speech or action taken by an American president like Lincoln or Roosevelt, his secondary intent is to remind readers of the disparity in tone between those leaders and Trump.

The specter of Trump hanging over the narrative serves yet another function. Throughout the book numerous individuals are cited whose rhetoric resembles that of the current president. To Meacham, these parallels illustrate that fear and hatred are nothing new in America—and while they are never truly conquered, the most effective presidents and activists can suppress them in the name of progress. As unprecedented as current events may seem to some Americans, Meacham writes, “History […] shows us that we are frequently vulnerable to fear, bitterness, and strife. The good news is that we have come through such darkness before” (5).

Expanding from that initial precept, Meacham believes the divisions that abound in US history—over race, over gender, over party affiliation—are simplified into a single dichotomy between hope and fear. While this may seem overly simplistic, the examples cited throughout the book support the idea that fear over immigrants, people of color, communists, Jews, and the advancement of women are often sorted under single organizations of hate like the Ku Klux Klan. Conversely, a broadening of who deserves equal treatment under the law is consistently embodied by the activists and elected officials whom the author identifies as beacons of hope and progress in America, albeit imperfectly.

This battle between hope and fear is depicted symbolically as a fight over America’s soul. In the above NPR quote, Meacham references the “American creed.” Readers might be forgiven for treating the American creed and the American soul of the book’s title as indistinguishable. Yet Meacham makes a clear distinction between the two. Coined by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in 1944, the American creed refers to “principles of liberty, of self-government, and of equal opportunity for all regardless of race, gender, religion, or nation of origin” (6). It’s an ideal to which America aspires. The soul of America, however, is found in Meacham’s recounting the reality of America. It contains good and evil, hope and fear. As Meacham puts it, “The message of Martin Luther King, Jr.—that we should be judged on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin—dwells in the American soul; so does the menace of the Ku Klux Klan” (7).

Though the arguments over race and immigration that make up the bulk of the book are anything but settled in the 21st century, Meacham expresses a persistent optimism that the arc of civilization turns toward progress. In fact, this optimism serves as a sort of precept for maintaining faith in the American republic, despite the fact that “our national greatness was built on explicit and implicit apartheid” (15). A reader may wonder if the author is overly selective in the anecdotes he highlights, such that they paint a portrait of an America forever moving, however imperfectly, toward a stronger ideal of racial justice. The very fact that Meacham begins his narrative in the mid-1850s ignores decades of genocide committed against American Indians, a shame he only sporadically alludes to in the book. Also absent is the half-century that separates Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in the 1960s and 2018, during which people of color suffered disproportionately as a result of persistent mass incarceration policies—or the “New Jim Crow,” as scholar and activist Michelle Alexander puts it—the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, and police brutality, among other depredations.

This isn’t to say racial progress is an illusion. In an article on the topic at The Nation magazine, author Mychal Denzel Smith writes, “Of course we’re doing better than chattel slavery. Of course we’re doing better than legal segregation,” though he adds that this emphasis on American progress is often a way to “absolve the evil of racism in its current form.” (Smith, Mychal Denzel. “Yes, America Has Gotten Better About Racism, but It Really Doesn’t Matter.” The Nation. 22 Nov. 2013.) Meacham by no means intends to do this. In fact, his whole reason for writing this book is to address injustice that persists in the 21st century due to the politics of fear. That said, it can be instructive to consider Smith’s words when following the arc of progress Meacham paints throughout the book.