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| During Reconstruction Black Officials Including Members of Congress Were Elected. |
Many Americans have intense emotions regarding the political
confederate movement which occurred during the mid-nineteenth century of
American history. The American Civil War
was a terrible but inevitable debacle in which moral and economic values
representing thousands of years of human history were finally brought to
bear. When the dust of battle settled
the ancient tradition of human slavery as a as a socioeconomic and political
system had come to an end and the radical Democratic government, also the first
of its kind to gain power in thousands of years, had been restored as a global
beacon of freedom. To some the
confederates were lawless rebels who launched a criminal and traitorous assault
upon the United States of America. To
others the confederate movement was a revolution against the tyranny of the
American government which they perceived as strangling their socioeconomic and
political manifest destiny to own human beings as slaves exerting their unquestionable will over them as their divinely appointed genetic superiors. Whether your
sentiments lie with the Confederate Movement and its failed movement to secede from the
Union or with The United States Government which sought to sustain the still
young and evolving democratic experiment called America you will agree that this episode in American
History was being carefully watched by the world as the first great test of the
revolutionary, egalitarian ideas of the Enlightenment. The enlightenment rose to prominence in Europe as an alternative to the ancient order of rule by divine right. The framers of the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were keenly aware of the ideals of the enlightenment and understood that they were soon about to transform the western world as Paris, London and many other European cities had become hotbeds for egalitarian revolution. The ideals of the enlightenment were rooted in the
human quest for freedom and self-determination for the common man, regardless
of race or sex and became the trial for a case which had taken many thousands of years of
human history to play itself out. Even
if the reader concludes that The Confederate Movement, like The Fascist, Nazi
Movement of the twentieth-century, was an evil, immoral and inhumane enterprise
that is all the more reason why it should be studied and fully understood from
the perspective of The Confederates if only to ensure that it’s politics and
philosophy will never again infect and threaten the freedom of free men.
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| Voting Rights Were Given To Blacks During The Reconstruction Period |
In order to truly understand the importance of the Civil War
one must literally immerse themselves into the mind of those times. When the Civil War began in 1861 the new
republic of The United States of America was 85 years old and the new French
Republic was only 62 years old. Both the
American and French revolutions were the culmination of over 172 years of
intellectual unrest which began with the European Age of Enlightenment around
1689. The fundamental ideals and
concepts of The Enlightenment called for a rethinking of the socio-political
and religious status-quot. It challenged
the divine right of Monarchs and of the church itself to exert absolute dominion over the lives of common men. The French revolution was only the first of a
long row of dominoes that would eventually be toppled as men struggled to free
themselves from political and economic slavery and it was to continue to play
itself out into the twentieth-century with the fall of the Nazi German in 1945
and USSR in 1991 approximately 302 years after the Enlightenment and 130 years
after The United States of America was founded.
So the concepts founded in The
Enlightenment took roughly 323 years to actually play themselves out to the
extent that we can experience in 2012; it has been a long struggle and one
which is not yet finished; but that is another story…
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| In Europe The Egalitarian Ideals Of The Enlightenment Had Toppled The French Monarchy |
From the seventeenth century on throughout the eighteenth
century Europe was a hotbed for the evolving concept of civil rights. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and other founding fathers represented the
American contingency of the literati of that age in the colonies and they read
extensively literature which was the signature of the age of enlightenment when
they could not actually be in Europe.
But when they could escape to Paris and London to personally immerse
themselves in this Cultural Revolution these framers of the American
Constitution and Declaration of Independence were intimately familiar and
sympathetic with the most progressive thinking of the century, a century that
had come to look unfavorably on slavery and divine right. These educated men knew they were but an
island in the sea of the day in which slavery was the most lucrative trade;
surely they understood that many decades would pass before the gilded rays of
the enlightenment could penetrate the fog that encompassed this nation of great
humanitarian potential. Although they
went to their graves without being able to see the injustice of slavery
lawfully curtailed the act of freeing their slaves upon their death was at the time
a unique and radical act of civil disobedience! Because slaves were property to be inherited by the heirs of the deceased owner to free ones slaves was tantamount to denying the privilege of divine right to future generations and theoretically setting the example by which all rights would be absolved and all slaves eventually freed. While it is certain that neither of the two former American Presidents George Washington or Thomas Jefferson had thoroughly thought out the loophole which would allow freed slaves to become re-enslaved their heroic act of civil disobedience evinced by freeing their personal slaves upon their death must have sent shock waves through the antebellum south and the north foreshadowing a great war to come...
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| This Notice Invited Americans To Hear Ralph Waldo Emersons Speech Renouncing The Fugitive Slave Act. |
Many believe that the confederate movement was one of the
first great efforts of the modern world to reverse the great humanitarian
progress catalyzed in the egalitarian philosophies of the enlightenment. The leaders of The Confederate movement were
learned men and they were also men of high principles. The organizers of the confederate movement
were well aware of the lofty Ideals of The enlightenment. They visualized their status within the
revised; hybrid-Greco-Roman political structure of The U.S. to be rooted in and
justified by the ancient patrician lifestyle together with all of its
privileges and exclusivity. Many of the landed gentry who encompassed the college of slave owners were themselves descended from European nobility and were keenly aware of their princely legacy as divinely preordained to rule not only the lives of lesser white men but most certainly of black men whom they deemed to be of a lesser form of human being than white men. During
the period leading up to the Civil War Wealthy Southerners who owned Large
Plantations and were slave owners were experiencing the same resistance as
European Kings and nobility abroad. Many
European colonies established since before the beginning of the Dutch East
India Company in 1500 were at unrest and struggling for freedom. The world was full of the fire of revolution
and sparks that had been kindling since the signing of the Declaration of
Independence that had been taking form for decades as a great preparation for
secession revealed itself full-blown to an America who must surely have been
aware of its preparation. The
Confederacy had its own army, currency, flag, it had elected its own president
and political leaders, generals etc.; In the nineteenth-century this would not
have been an easy thing to disguise. Whether a conscious ideological movement or not,
the confederacy represented a clear and armed challenge to the philosophical Enlightenment which upheld individual rights and freedoms extended across all
races and sexes. Its failure forever
changed the global climate of human rights bringing a bloody end to the
political tradition in human history in which the laws of a government could be
used to enslave or subjugate a race or group of peoples and deny them the right
to participate in the shaping of their own destiny. As such it must be studied as a critical
turning point in the history of mankind itself. When The United States of America
consolidated itself after the Civil War, restoring the rebellious states to their
historical union, it became a global benchmark for modern governments of the
future.
The laws of The United States are silent to the specific act
of secession but treat similar types of action taken against the United States
under Chapter 115 of title 18 of the U.S. Code Annotated as acts of, “treason,
rebellion, or insurrection, seditious conspiracy and avocation of the overthrow
of the government as criminal offenses.”
From a purely legal perspective the confederate secession from The
United States Government was an illegal act of treason.
The opening of The Declaration of Independence reads as
follows:
“When in the
Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature
and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.”
This is the opening argument for secession from the
government of England; it declares fundamental and irreconcilable differences
between The Thirteen American Colonies and England such that a permanent
separation is required. Doubtless the
Authors of the confederacy were consoled by this beautiful opening passage
likening themselves to the founding colonies and seeking glorious
self-determination from what they felt to be the tyranny of the American
government. But as most documents it is
important not to take any one phrase or group of phrases too far out of context
lest the central meaning itself be perverted or altogether lost in the effort.
The last passages of The Declaration of Independence read as
follows:
“We, therefore,
the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress,
Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these
Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of
Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all
Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them
and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that
as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude
Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and
Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Again, in the eyes of the framers of the confederacy, this
poetic but real language would seem to offer clear justification for their
secession from The United States.
Again, the organizers of the confederate movement were populated by some
of the most prominent lawyers, judges, and intellectuals of the day, many of
which had also studied extensively abroad in Europe. They were no less eloquent or knowledgeable
than any northern American lawyers or other political, intellectual
counterparts. We must put aside any bias
we may have for the southern states who organized themselves around the
confederacy to look at their argument objectively so that we may clearly
understand the urgency they felt to remove themselves from what was then
emerging as one of the newest and fastest growing political and economic powers
of the nineteenth century outside of Europe, The United States of America.
But when we look at the second passage of The Declaration of
Independence we find that it takes on another character, one patently inspired
by the lofty ideals of The Enlightenment.
“We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to
which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has
been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity
which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history
of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute
Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid
world.”
Now this is the
critical point of divide, the point at which we must be able to place ourselves
into the minds of the framers of the confederacy. These men were undoubtedly slaveholders and
descended of a long line of Plantation owners.
The condition and institution of slavery as a fundamental norm of
society was planted in every molecule of their being, it was an
incontrovertible truth to their way of life and that of their ancestors who
founded the southern colonies. It was
their “R’ason D’etre”! Furthermore,
these southern planters, similar to the way European Kings and nobility felt
about common people, had come to consider African slaves to be their
possessions, chattels, assets afforded them by divine right. The idea of the American government as a
Republic further justified the landowners as superior to those even of European
descent, who were not part of the landed gentry, American Aristocracy or
Patrician class if you will… Although The Declaration of Independence
identifies all men to have been created equally, a southerner would surely not
have considered a Black slave to be human or a man of equal stature to himself
and thus the point of slavery being somehow unconstitutional was completely
unimaginable. On a certain level one can
imagine how a southerner, indoctrinated in the mindset of the time would have
completely overlooked even the remote possibility of a Black man or woman as an
equal to themselves because virtually every facet of life in the antebellum
south reinforced the fact that they were not equal on any field of play. Every facet of southern life was organized
around the theme of racial and economic superiority and inferiority, even poor,
uneducated and working class whites were considered to be of lower stature by
middle class, upper class and educated whites.
These views of racial superiority would not be substantially challenged
by scientific data until around 1913 when the first hominid fossils were
discovered in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania in East Africa surprisingly only 52 years
after the beginning of the Civil War in North America. Southerners who seceded from the Union were
fighting a war they may have honestly felt was ethically grounded because they
did not believe Blacks were their equal as men and had manufactured a socioeconomic
system that enforced what we now know to be a cruel, inhuman and unjustified
form of institutional racism; but during the mid-nineteenth century the
practise of slavery had been established for nearly 300 years In the Americas
and in the New World so it was a norm of society like washing ones face in the
morning. To say that southerners were
not aware of the mission of Abolitionists to abolish slavery on the grounds
that it was ethnically and racially unsound and that a growing number of
Americans now considered Black slaves and freedmen to be men and women owed
equal stature to whites would be a gross misrepresentation of the times. Whether southerners tacitly acquiesced to the
philosophical arguments of the Abolitionists that bombarded their established
way of life, closeting their humanitarian sentiments is unknown but clearly
significant enough numbers of southerners became ego-invested in defending
rising claims of immorality and inhumanity directed at not only the sale and
possession of slaves but the iron-clad system of racial oppression required to
maintain that status-quo. Whether you
take the position that the Civil War was fought principally as a humanitarian
movement to end the century’s old practise of slavery blemishing the conscience
and integrity of America; That it was a calculated move principally driven by
the economic greed of the south who had enjoyed a free slave labor system or of
northerners who felt intimidated by the economic potential of the south or
whether you believe that the War began because the United States Government
under Abraham Lincoln simply had to save face by putting down an embarrassing
revolution is up you the individual.
In lieu of the continuing struggle to properly place
confederate sentiment into the legacy of the American nation a growing number
of Americans have been challenged by the question of whether it is appropriate
for the Confederate flag to be flown on State or Federal property; One strategy
for examining the validity of the Confederate Movement and its principal
symbol, the confederate flag would require as the specific burden of proof,
verification that the inherent symbolism of the confederate flag
contradicts
and challenges the struggle for
political, racial and
social equality as defined in The Declaration of Independence and as such its
use as an American Icon would openly proclaim defiance to the free peoples and
government of The United States of America.
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| The Capitol of The Confederacy At Richmond Virginia |
The brand of socio-political stratification intended by The
Confederates differed hugely from that of The United States Government. The Confederate Movement was a continuation
of the status-quo; White male landowners and wealthy businessmen would rule as
an aristocratic class excluding women, blacks, poor whites and nonwhites of any
gender and race from economic, political and social equality. Not only did the United States Government, at
the time of the Civil War, intend to free black slaves but it hesitantly
enlisted black soldiers allowing them to fight for the cause of the American
government. After the war, during the
Reconstruction Period, Black men were elected to political offices, serving in
congress and at every level of government.
I will not herein make any claims that The American government, and the
majority of white Americans though they, themselves implemented these
progressive measures, were fully on-board with what they ultimately represented
but one must acknowledge that they were willing to experiment with this
radically forward thinking concept of unilateral equality though it lasted only
a short time.
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| Add caption |
Furthermore, in order for The Confederate Movement to
maintain and justify its use of free black labor it had to implement a cruel
and inhumane system of political discrimination which would deny black men and
women the political leverage to extricate themselves from their plight. In order to justify and enforce slavery
southern states systematically polluted and perverted the law to suit their
purposes by passing types of legislation such as the fugitive slave act. These laws served one purpose only, to keep
the black man from achieving anything!
The rationale for this blatant racism was rooted in the concept of white
supremacy.
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| The North Was Vehemently Opposed To The Spread Of Slavery |
Even if one wants to be
sympathetic to the argument that says when a person is conditioned by a system
of racial/sexual inequality from childhood, raised on the dominant side, one
cannot be held accountable for being brainwashed! Owing to the historical accounts preserved in
diaries and genealogical records we know that blacks and whites coexisted on a
level of intimacy far different from that between their cattle, and other
chattels. Any rational, logical
intelligent person who ever interacted with a black slave in the broad
range of scenarios from a personal servant to a sexual partner must have surely
known that, other than skin color, sex and other racial markers there was no
difference between themselves and the slave.
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| Americans Celebrating Their Ancestral Legacy As Descendants of Confederates |
On this very day in the twenty-first century we we encounter oppressed
people newly come to America and tolerate their social inequality and suffering
because of apathy but we know that these people eat, sleep, think and function
the same as ourselves. One has to throw
in this heavy dose of “Realness” because it transcends time and context, the
human experience is universal thing and it alone has not changed during the
millions of years of our theoretical evolution upon this planet. For this reason alone, which every cognizant
human being who has ever had a chance to interact with anyone from another race
can relate to, the argument of The Confederate Movement utterly fails. This leaves us to note that, knowing black
slaves were really not the inferior savages that racism painted them to be,
white southerners nonetheless pursued this end solely for economic gain. In America, racism has achieved proportions
which supersede rational thought. This
leaves the primary justifications for The Confederate Movement to racism and
economics, a poor argument for the oppression of millions of people.
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| General Lee Surrenders To General Grant Ending The American Civil War |
The outcome of things is sometimes merely what it is at the
end of the day and may have no bearing on morality or any lofty ideals though
humans like to believe that it does. In
case is unique; it represents a battle between the haves and the have-nots that
had been going on since the dawn of our species. It represents the first successful attempt at
true democracy and egalitarianism since ancient times. America was founded upon principles
elucidated in the Enlightenment, a movement that began in Europe and bought to
this country by the very luminaries who crafted The Declaration of
Independence. As such America can be
viewed as a great charrette, an experiment and a fully articulated movement
against the concept of Divine Right, social, political and economic
stratification, a movement against a caste system based on birthright, racial and
religious status quo’s. The authors of
the Declaration of Independence were aware of the changing popularity of
slavery in Europe, they knew that the trend was moving toward an end to slavery
but they understood that the economy of young America, unlike that of Europe,
was more closely tied to its proliferation for survival. By the middle of the nineteenth-century
America enjoyed the economic successes of the Industrial Revolution and the
unfinished business of slavery was gaining momentum both in the north towards
abolition and in the south towards secession as a means of preserving the
institution of slavery. The success of
the American Revolution had inspired political revolutions around the globe,
everywhere, monarchies and centuries-old empires base on Divine right were
falling. By the mid nineteenth-century
America, still viewed by the world as the great beacon of freedom and
modernity, was under critical fire because of its preservation of slavery. Slavery remained the last blemish on the
conscience of America but it was perceived as the life blood of the south that
had got used to it and had invested great energy and cost into its continuation
in spite of the obvious; The Industrial
Revolution with its mechanized production capability had rendered manual slave
labor obsolete. Rather than invest in
the technological trends of the day and abandon slavery, the southern states
chose tradition over pragmatism racism over brotherhood and these obsolete
choices defined the parameters marking their eventual decisive loss of the
Civil War. The south organized The
Confederate Movement as the first great resistance to the egalitarian ideas of
the movement called the Enlightenment ironically within the very country that
became the global icon for the manifestation of its lofty revolutionary ideals,
America.
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| Jefferson Davis, President of The Confederacy, With His Wife |
The world watched this battle
of ideals play out on American soil. The
War of 1812 had nothing on this historic debacle; it was no more than a pot
shot from a safe haven in comparison.
The American Civil War was the first significant challenge to the Ideals
of the Enlightenment. Anyone living at
that time whether from the north or the south would surely have been aware of
the impending doom. In the
mid-nineteenth century, without the aid of factories The Confederate Movement
did not manufacture an army complete with forts, uniforms, officers, a flag and
its own rebel currency overnight…
Abraham Lincoln saw this battle coming as surely as he was tall, and so
did the rest of America and the global community.
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| The Confederates Printed Their Own Currency |
The secession of the Confederate states from America was a
criminal act, a treasonous act perpetrated after many years of careful and
deliberate preparation. The Confederate
Movement challenged the very existence of America and its primary icon, the one
symbol that survives even its infamous, treacherous history is the confederate
flag. The confederates sacrificed their
lives for the cause of slavery and racial inequality. But what is even more unforgivable, they took
the lives of hundreds of thousands of Union Officers who fought for freedom in
order supplant The American Government
and establish the Confederate government, a system founded upon racial
hatred and oppression manifested in the highest form of inhumanity, the forced
enslavement of men, women and children…
The confederate flag was the icon of this great evil much as the
swastika was for the Nazis… No one
forced the confederate states to enter into this union in 1776, they did so
freely and happily and were thereafter bound by the laws of this great land
even if it meant the demise of a long enjoyed tradition of slavery and racism.
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| Map Of Mid-Nineteenth Century America Showing The Slave States Highligted |
So we must ask ourselves why the icon of criminals, traitors
and racists whose illegal rebellion was put down would be flown aside the
American flag. To do so would be to defile the legacy of those who died and
fought for the preservation of the Union, the true defenders and heroes of
America who fought and died under the true American flag.
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| The Jail Cell At Fort Monroe Where Jefferson Davis Was Imprisoned For Treason |
While I cannot imagine any reasonable justification for the
flying of the confederate flag on a government building I can understand why
descendants of confederates would want to preserve the legacy of their
ancestors. As Americans we cannot deny
them the personal use of this icon on private property. But on public property, on government
property, the confederate flag is nothing short of defilement of the American
flag and of the legacy of freedom and struggle that it symbolizes. The Confederate flag on U.S. land can only be
viewed as a defilement and challenge to America itself!
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| Fort Monroe Where The Confederate President Was Imprisoned |
So let confederate sympathizers raise their infamous criminal
flag on their own private property but let them take this icon of disgust,
immorality and inhumanity from our sacred temples of freedom and democracy! The
history of The Confederate Movement is sewn into the fabric of America albeit
as a failed, criminal rebellion and the Civil War should be discussed and
celebrated as a great triumph for freedom by the Union Army at a time of
critical moral uncertainty in America. Let
the message be clearly sent, “The war was lost by confederates and confederacy,
including its most powerful icon, the confederate flag, shall rise no more”!
FIN
Written by David Vollin from 3/8/12
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| A Rare Daguerreotype Showing Frederick Douglass At An Abolition Rally |
