Heather Cox Richardson has about 1.4 million followers on Facebook. Her daily history lessons are superbly engaging and worthy of one’s time. She is a professor at Boston College who covers current politics like its already history. As a Civil War scholar she understands that we are in a Civil War now.
Sunday was the anniversary of the first shots fired at Fort Sumter in 1861. Her reflection on the occasion, enhanced by the words of Abraham Lincoln, and put in the context of the Derek Chauvin trial are inspiring.
Here’s a taste of Lincoln speaking on the subject of those who defend slavery:
“they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent….”
More below the fold.
The men who framed the Constitution had made the terrible error of believing in equality, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, the newly-elected vice president of the Confederacy, told a crowd on March 21, 1861. Northerners, he said, stupidly clung to the outdated idea that “the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man.”
In contrast to the United States government,” Stephens said, “the Confederate government rested on the “great truth” that “the negro is not equal to the white man; that… subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Stephens told listeners that the Confederate government “is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Abraham Lincoln rejected this radical attempt to destroy the principles of the Declaration of Independence. He understood that it was not just Black rights at stake, but also democracy. Arguments like that of Stephens, that some men were better than others, “are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world,” Lincoln said. “You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent….”
Lincoln warned that “it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?” He told an audience in Chicago, Illinois, that Americans must stand with the Declaration of Independence or, he said, “If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!”
When the North won the Civil War, it did not only preserve the Union, it preserved the idea of equality that our nation was founded on, it preserved for our benefit the phrase “all men are created equal,” and it seemed for a time to destroy the notion “they always bestrode the necks of the people.”
The death of George Floyd and the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th should frighten all of us.
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