Chapter 6
White Supremacy: As American as the
Constitution.
“The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you’ve looked at any of the
evidence. You’ve got to mold the evidence to give you the answer that you’ve already decided you have to have”. – Bill Clinton
White Supremacy and racism is foundational to America.
It’s codified in our constitution.
Article I Sec. 2.(basing a state’s representation in the House
on its Free population and 3/5 of all other persons)
Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned
among the several states which may be included within this union, according to
their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole
number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
Article I Sec. 9.
(Barring congress from abolishing the slave trade before 1808)
The migration or importation of such persons as any of the
states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or
duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each
person.
Article IV Sec. 2.
(providing for the return of runaway slaves)
A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or
other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall
on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be
delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.
No person held to service or labor in one state, under the
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be
delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
By design, the United States was created as a White, male
dominated society. Without a doubt, not all of our founders were of this mind,
however, there were enough to block any attempt to force it to live up to its
stated claim that “All men are created equal”. Clearly, some were more equal
than others. If all the states were
going to take part in this new venture, then concessions would have to be made
to bring others into the fold. Many of our founders were in fact, slave owners.
Washington and Jefferson were two of the more notable in this regard. It would take almost another 100 years and a
civil war to change that. Lincoln managed to do it, and he was hated in the
south for his position. When he was elected, the southern states seceded from
the union even before he took office.
The view in the South was that the Federal government had no right to
tell them how to run their economy and slavery was essential to it.
The articles of secession coming from Mississippi are very
clear.
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which
Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of
Mississippi from the Federal Union.
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of
dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a
part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have
induced our course. “
“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.”
In an article by James W. Loewen, published in the
Washington Post, Mr. Loewen presented a few facts which he titled “Five myths
about why the South seceded”.
1. The South seceded over states’ rights.
Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no
state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed
states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.
On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession
convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and
Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an
increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the
institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to
“fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of
fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.
South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer
allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend
August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and
South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New
England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies.
According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their
citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery.
Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position
is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest
material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession
declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which
constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of
the earth. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and The South’s
opposition to states’ rights is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern
presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in
power in Washington always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own.
2. Secession was about tariffs and taxes.
During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations — the
terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became
all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented
African Americans from voting — “anything but slavery” explanations of the
Civil War gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully
float this false claim, along with their preferred name for the conflict: the
War Between the States. At the infamous Secession Ball in South Carolina,
hosted in December by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “the main reasons for
secession were portrayed as high tariffs and Northern states using Southern tax
money to build their own infrastructure,” The Washington Post reported.
These explanations are flatly wrong. High tariffs had
prompted the Nullification Controversy in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina
demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President
Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South
Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states
said nothing about them. Why would they?
Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which
the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816.
3. Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves,
so they wouldn’t secede for slavery.
Indeed, most white Southern families had no slaves. Less
than half of white Mississippi households owned one or more slaves, for
example, and that proportion was smaller still in whiter states such as
Virginia and Tennessee. It is also true that, in areas with few slaves, most
white Southerners did not support secession. West Virginia seceded from
Virginia to stay with the Union, and Confederate troops had to occupy parts of
eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to hold them in line.
However, two ideological factors caused most Southern
whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First,
Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to
join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large
slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many
low-income people supported the Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in their bid for the
2012 presidency.
Second and more important, belief in white supremacy
provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu
observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures
[enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion
would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.” Given this belief, most
white Southerners — and many Northerners, too — could not envision life in
black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were
in chains. Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the
Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not
protected.
“The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated
or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women,
their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession
would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy
as well.
4. Abraham Lincoln went to war to end slavery.
Since the Civil War did end slavery, many Americans think
abolition was the Union’s goal. But the North initially went to war to hold the
nation together. Abolition came later.
On Aug. 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to the
New York Tribune that included the following passage: “If I could save the
Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some
and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the
colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I
forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
However, Lincoln’s own anti-slavery sentiment was widely
known at the time. In the same letter, he went on: “I have here stated my
purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of
my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” A month
later, Lincoln combined official duty and private wish in his preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation.
White Northerners’ fear of freed slaves moving north then
caused Republicans to lose the Midwest in the congressional elections of
November 1862.
Gradually, as Union soldiers found help from black
civilians in the South and black recruits impressed white units with their
bravery, many soldiers — and those they wrote home to — became abolitionists.
By 1864, when Maryland voted to end slavery, soldiers’ and sailors’ votes made
the difference.
5. The South couldn’t have made it long as a
slave society.
Slavery was hardly on its last legs in 1860. That year,
the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports. Slaves were worth
more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation. No elite
class in history has ever given up such an immense interest voluntarily.
Moreover, Confederates eyed territorial expansion into Mexico and Cuba. Short
of war, who would have stopped them — or forced them to abandon slavery?
To claim that slavery would have ended of its own accord
by the mid-20th century is impossible to disprove but difficult to accept. In
1860, slavery was growing more entrenched in the South. Unpaid labor makes for
big profits, and the Southern elite was growing ever richer. Freeing slaves was
becoming more and more difficult for their owners, as was the position of free
blacks in the United States, North as well as South. For the foreseeable
future, slavery looked secure. Perhaps a civil war was required to end it.
As we commemorate the sesquicentennial of that war, let us
take pride this time — as we did not during the centennial — that secession on
slavery’s behalf failed.
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