Looming Red

In his ongoing strategy to divide people along racial, social, and religious lines rather than lines of interest, Obama is launching the his “African Americans for Obama” effort. The absurdity of this racialist campaign strategy is hard to overstate. One need only change the name to “White Americans for Obama” to show the absurdity. There is no excuse for this campaign initiative.

“It’s only absurd if you don’t take into consideration the history of this country.” That is one of those points that is supposed to send me running for cover lest I be found guilty of political incorrectness. I not only do not shrink at the statement, I am highly offended at it.

That is a Mob phrase. What does it even mean? What is the history of this country that excuse all racist and racialist behavior when committed by protected group? Racism is racism is racism.

What makes me, an American who is white, guilty for the crimes perpetrated by slave-holders and their 18th and 19th century American apologists? Most of my ancestors were poor immigrants while slavery still existed here with no ties to slavery or slave-holding, but even if they were slave-holders I am no more guilty of such crimes than I would be guilty of a murder committed by a forbear.

I am so offended by the historical excuse for racism that I don’t even want to discuss it with the one who uses that excuse. Once a person shows themselves to be so far gone as to accept such an idea unquestioningly, I do not have hope in the usefulness of any argument no matter how rational. Mere words cannot dislodge such poisonous thinking. Still I cannot let it slide. Let us examine the history of the United states that so condemns us or in debts us to future and present racist slights.

Slavery was not a unique condition to the Colonies or to the United States. There is no locale on this Earth that does not have slavery in its past. There is nearly no so-called race of people who has not been on either end of the master/slave relationship. In fact, the very word slave is actually derived from the word for slav or slavic people, because of the mass enslavement of the slavic peoples of eastern europe by western europeans. The history of the world is a history of enslavement and captivation of the weak by the strong. The enslavement of far away eastern europeans of the middle-ages was only replaced by the enserfment of local peoples by the strong nobilities. Slavery, although condemnable, was not unique or unusual to the United States or its founding British ex-colonies.

Given the slave condition of even advanced societies like the Roman Republic and later Empire, the Greek democracies, Ottoman Empire, the various Chinese dynasties, and on and on, the question should not be about what made the United States a nation that accepted slavery within its borders. The question should be about what made the United States gradually, then abruptly abandon the practice and acceptance of slavery.

At the time of the founding of the United States, there were 8 slave states and 5 free states a direct carry-over in condition from the free and slave British colonies. By 1821 the ratio was 50/50 with 12 slave states and 12 free states. By 1861, the count was 15 slave states to 19 free states. While gaining some ground in territories like Nevada and New Mexico, slavery had made no ground in the new states for over 20 years prior to the civil war. Why?

The abolitionist movements can trace its roots clearly back to the founding of the nation right with the very authors of the constitution. Some of the greatest points of debate over the establishment of the constitution were the sunsetting of the slave importation trade, slave counting in representation, and the entering of subsequent states as free or slave states. The issue between those of moral conscience and slave-holders was so contentious that it nearly brought down the nacent constitution. While the suffering of the African slaves would go on with signing of the constitution, the seeds of slavery’s destruction were sown there at the convention.

Even the three fifths clause is an example of the abolitionist bent in the document. It was the anti-slavery position to not count the black slaves at all. The anti-slavery founders wanted to state to the world the condition of the black person in the United States.

Anti-slavery founders like Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, others wrote on the subject of abolition to the public at large and to fellow pro-slavery founders as well. When one examines the sliding acceptance of slavery by George Washington, first against his mind for efficiency coming from his military background, and then against his moral conscience, one can see the influence of letters from Benjamin Franklin advising against the moral depravity of slavery. The last decade of Washington’s life was spent partially devising a method to free his slaves acquired by him previously and carried by Martha’s inherited estate. To the young he gave educational trusts and to the old he gave pensions so that they could be self-reliant and not re-enslaved when they found themselves with no means to provide for themselves.

Abolitionism spread throughout the states and territories like a fire of right and freedom. The Republican Party was founded because of the pro-choice stance of the waining WIG Party on the issue of slavery. Lincoln’s house divided speech was given at the podium of 1858 Republican State Convention. Lincoln’s speech is eloquent to this day:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it…

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

He knew of the division and the contradiction of slavery in the free United States of America. His hope that it would not destroy was expressed:

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

He could not have foreseen in 1858 the wave of support that would ascend him to the presidency against the favored candidate, Stephen Douglas. Millions of voters supported the anti-slavery candidate over the pro-slavery one. Because of that support, against his hope that the Union would not be dissolved, states dissolved their ties to the Union and seceded.

It is often expressed ignorantly or subversively that the Civil War was fought not over slavery but over secession. It is hard to express how angry that dismissal makes me. Read the “Declaration of Causes of Seceding States”. They could not be clearer as to their reason for secession. From Georgia:

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery…

…The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies…anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state.

From South Carolina:

[The constitutional] ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized…

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

From Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

The blood of pro and anti-slavery forces washed over the nation. Whole entire war tactics, from the use of artillery, machine gun emplacements, submarine blockades, etc, were invented over the issue of slavery. The right of free Americans to Habeas Corpus established in the Magna Carta 1215 was suspended because of the issue of slavery and it resulting war. The United States nearly killed itself over the issue of slavery.

It is deplorable disrespect for the dead to reject what the fought over. Their blood sanctified that war. In Lincoln’s words:

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

It was the war over slavery that allowed the president to declare the slaves of the states in rebellion to be free.

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

The civil war was fought over the issue of slavery. The southern states seceded over slavery and fought reunion over slavery. Approximately 650,000 people combined died from either side of the fight. 2.5 million Union soldiers mobilized against the south because of abolition separating the states. 750,000 to 1.25 million secessionist soldiers mobilized over the issue of slavery. No nation in the history of this world has ever fought such a war over the freedom of its minorities. None.

This nation has paid dearly for its moral high-ground on the issue of race. We fought our bloodiest war, we amended our founding document, we enacted legislation, we did whatever we could to redeem ourselves from the issue of race and our history. That the president would dare create ”African Americans for Obama” initiative in his campaign is not only racist, it is a slight against those who have died over the issue. It is a slight against those who lived through the worst years holding to their moral indignation over an institution and racism that they had no hope of dispelling in their time.

Barak Obama should rightfully be condemned for his racist campaign strategy.