The Freed Slaves’ Prospects; or, The Copperheads’ Revenge

This drawing from 1863 encapsulates the dangerous anti-federal anti-black sentiment that bubbled up in the Civil War north once the slaves were freed.  Dominating the drawing is a figure resembling Lincoln, mowing the field with a scythe and in the process exposing some snakes in the grass.  The verse below identifies the snakes as venomous “copperheads.”

Copperheads were a faction of northern “peace Democrats” sympathetic to slaveholding who opposed the war to preserve the Union.  Their opposition to race equality and perverse sympathy for Southern rebels clouded the prospects of black Americans and threatened the realization of the Republicans’ plans.  (Since the South had seceded and taken up arms, the US government was left mainly in Republican hands.)

The Copperhead faction, whose adherents were mainly from Ohio, Indiana, and other Midwestern states, were vigorous dissenters during the worst crisis Constitutional government had faced to date.

Beyond the Mower, episodes of a national saga unfold.  The scenes depict the massive social and economic transformation that “Black Republicans” had hoped would follow from abolition.  They anticipated that former slaves, once freed from Southern bondage, would become equal participants in a prosperous “free labor” economy on the same terms as whites.

The two halves of the drawing envision this heartening progression, as chattel slaves, depicted on the right under a stormy sky, begin living into the promise of personal freedom and autonomy.  Formerly, blacks enslaved in the South lived in demeaning conditions, their well-being dependent on the will of their owners and overseers.  At center, a fugitive slave carrying a child is pursued by dogs.

On the left, emancipated slaves labor on the land with dignity.  Like other Americans, they are part of a prosperous “free soil” economy, more than sufficient to meet their needs.  In the distance, a substantial-looking farmstead telegraphs a “dream home,” come true.

Unfortunately, emancipation ignited virulent opposition in some segments of white America.  The Copperheads couldn’t relate to a real shift in American sentiment that had led a majority of the electorate to reject slavery and the South’s “states-rights” defense of its “peculiar institution.”  Copperheads viewed the Union war effort as an abuse of federal authority.  They pleaded for a peaceful negotiated settlement with the South.

Copperheads were agrarians who feared that the modernization championed by eastern Republicans (which included industrialization) would jeopardize and eclipse their way of life.  Copperhead leader Clement Vallandigham was so vehement in opposing the federal government that he was tried for treason and exiled to live in the Confederacy.  Copperheads were understood to be active in the Knights of the Golden Circle, a fraternity whose goal was Southern expansion around the Gulf of Mexico to preserve the South’s distinctive way of life.  In the words of historian David C. Keehn, “The Knights were a militant oath-bound secret society dedicated to promoting Southern rights (including slavery) and extending Southern hegemony over the Golden Circle region,” encompassing the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, and Central America.

The Copperheads’ impolitic opposition to progressive forces at work in US society echoes across the ages, finding voice in the militant anti-federalism fueling Trumpism and other reactionary causes today.  Just as baleful was the underlying racism that led Copperheads to embrace the cause of slavery and white supremacy, a world view that justified the exclusion and prejudicial treatment of black Americans.

Image: from this source.

1870: Black Voting Rights Secured–Right?

On this day in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified.  Its text is brief.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The passage of the Amendment was a staggeringly large step toward race equality in America.  Yet even before three-quarters of the states ratified it, racists began to deter blacks from exercising their new political power: the power of the ballot.  The campaign against them, consisting of intimidation, violence, and legal obstacles, was particularly brazen in the former slave states.  Shockingly, it would be another 100 years before the promise of the 15th Amendment became something like a reality.  With the new assault on voting rights we see today, the fragility of this Constitutional guarantee is obvious.

Image: from this source.

A Storybook Dream of Reconstruction

In the years immediately after the Civil War, the victors imagined that the US was on the verge of becoming a racially just society. For four long years, Americans had warred against one another over the issue of slavery and whether the states had a right to secede.  The Confederate states had staked everything on these ideas.  Their determination to cling to them became a matter of pride and at last shame and bitterness, because in the end, they could not carry the argument even with the aid of cannons and guns.  When the Union won in 1865, shouldn’t the argument have been over, too? Continue reading

Day 42: Determined on Equality

Underneath all the other issues of election 2020, is this essential choice: Will the US continue to advance toward becoming a fully equal society, or will its citizens turn from that, imagining that a nation of white privilege will mean happier times? To an unusual degree, this presidential contest boils down to whether the nation will resist change or realize its destiny as a place where people of all complexions can coexist, enjoy full equality, and thrive.

Our politics is unusually nasty because the nation is moving with some determination toward this goal. The election of the first black president, Barack Obama, was a 21st-century “fire bell” to white America. In response, whites who imagine themselves to be “patriots” have dusted off their rebel regalia and clustered around the monuments valorizing “the Lost Cause.” They have puffed up with pride, hearing president Trump call them “fine people.”

In the view of these “fine people,” much of what is wrong with the US has to do with the Democrats and their incomprehensible loyalty to the cause of black equality. Trump supporters can’t accept that Obama won office (twice!) on the basis of his merits. There must have been some trick, some fraud involved.

Trump is incapable of leading a nation experiencing a new birth of interracial solidarity. A majority of the US has grown accustomed to integration. Equality is the norm in our neighborhoods, workplaces, domiciles, universities, public institutions, regiments, and playing fields. Smart phones have shattered our innocence, making the reality of police brutality against blacks impossible to tolerate, ignore, or deny. Even as people of color fall ill and die of COVID disproportionately, Trump’s White House sees in their sad plight only political gain. He would rebrand as “terrorists” and “enemies” Americans who protest peacefully for equality.

Time and again, the prospect of black equality has triggered crises in our political system. When the black race stands to gain, presidential elections tend to get tumultuous, and federalism itself threatens to break under the strain. Slavery was perpetuated for decades because white Americans could not imagine coexisting with a free black population. Even radical Republicans of Abraham Lincoln’s generation balked at the idea that white and black people were equally capable of freedom, equally suited to being citizens of a republic, even as Republicans were certain that black slavery was wrong.

After the Civil War, blacks languished as an oppressed and segregated population, despite new Constitutional amendments supposedly securing their full civil rights. It was “nothing but freedom,” and in the more than one-hundred-and-fifty years since, Americans have struggled with all that becoming a truly fair and tolerant society involves. We’re getting closer!

The United States is getting nearer to accomplishing a rare feat, becoming a nation that is not tribal but abides by a color-blind code of equality. In the context of this determined movement, Trump’s reelection would be aberrant indeed.

Image: from this source.

Will #MeToo Be The Senate’s Waterloo?

Something decisive will occur in the Senate this week.  Not just a nomination hearing, but a political drama crystallizing in the minds of Americans the nature of a political party, and an institution.

In a hearing set for Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a person of respectable character.  They will hear from a California psychology professor, Christine Blasey-Ford, who has come out of nowhere with a believable claim that in 1982 Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when she was 15.  Kavanaugh denies it.  Despite the perturbation the allegations are causing, Senate Republicans are intent on shielding the nominee.  Determined to treat whatever is disclosed in tomorrow’s hearing as irrelevant to his confirmation, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell anticipates that, after hearing from the two parties in a non-judicial setting, the committee will vote on the confirmation the very next day.

On the way to that vote, America will see how its leaders behave.  How do senators treat a woman whose personal story threatens the plans of President Trump and the Republican Party?  How considerate are they in sorting out this very unsavory #MeToo story, which the recent openness of women in discussing sexual assault is empowering?  To what extent have senators reckoned with the implications of sexual equality, or how badly are they out of step with the times?

President Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress have dug in their heels, exploiting their every institutional advantage in an effort to mute a damning social narrative and push Kavanaugh through.  Trump’s White House has become Kavanaugh’s sanctuary.  He has been holed up there like a wanted man, arming himself with the latest in dis-ingenuity.  Kavanaugh’s proxies have spread out on the news circuit, broadcasting doe-eyed astonishment that anyone could fail to see Judge Kavanaugh as squeaky-clean.  Meanwhile, Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the judiciary committee, has announced that an outside interlocutor, Rachel Mitchell, a sex-crimes prosecutor from Arizona, will spare Republicans members the embarrassment of figuring out how to talk with Dr. Ford.  A brilliant fix for a hearing where the goal is to avoid hearing anything she says.

Ultimately—and this is what the president and Senate don’t seem to get—, Dr. Ford’s challenge to Kavanaugh’s confirmation isn’t about legalities.  It’s about whether Kavanaugh is acceptable to society.   It’s about whether Brett Kavanaugh, who is rumored to have put his hand over a girl’s mouth while attempting to overpower her, is a socially respectable being.  Is he a gentleman?  Today, American society is ostracizing harassers of women because their behavior is anathema to equality.  The buzz surrounding Kavanaugh is alarmingly loud.

Over the centuries, the Senate has often exemplified dignity.  It has upheld courtesy as an ideal, as a source of inner order, as the secret of its prestige.  Tomorrow, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be called on to receive “an inconvenient rememberer” courteously.  Yet, as #MeToo comes knocking, a blinkered and insensitive Senate cowers.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Caitlin Flanagan, “I Believe Her,” The Atlantic.
Caitlin Flanagan, “The Abandoned World of 1982,” The Altantic.