The Buried Past of the Democratic Party

Bruce Bartlett writes:

Townhall.com - Bartlett's Notations: I originally set up this blog to respond to the many critics of my syndicated column, which appeared at Townhall.  I have since decided to give up the column--not because of my critics, but because I have decided to concentrate my writing efforts on book projects.

For those who may be interested, my next book is titled, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past.  It's scheduled for January, 2008 by Palgrave Macmillan and is available for preorder at Amazon.com. 

It basically argues that, historically speaking, the Democratic Party has been the party of racism in this country throughout most of its existence.  I am hopeful that the book will open the door to Republicans in the black community.  For their own good, I think African American voters need to be courted by both parties.  As it is, they are essentially ignored by both--the Democrats take them for granted, while Republicans have given up hope and don't even try to get black votes any more.

Furthermore, I believe that the growing problem of immigration may be a wedge issue for Republicans because blacks share their concerns about it.  I think it is revealing that Congressman Tom Tancredo--a one-issue, anti-immigration candidate--was the only Republican who showed up to speak to the NAACP convention on July 12.  Moreover, he appears to have gotten a good bit of applause for his comments.  I discuss the similarity between black views of immigrants and those of Republicans in my book...

It is certainly true that up until some moment not all that long ago--1933? 1948? 1960?--the Democratic Party was the party of racism: winning elections in the South by reminding voters that Lincoln had freed the slaves, and winning elections in the urban North by telling poor immigrants to the cities from other countries that the Republican Party was on the side of the poor Negro migrants to the cities from the South. But the Democratic Party changed, and people like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and George Wallace and Trent Lott became first Dixiecrats and then American Party members and now Republicans.

The process of the transformation of the Democratic Party interacted with the congressional seniority system in odd ways. For twenty years, up until 1965 or so, northern Democrats in favor of civil rights voted southern Democrats opposed to civil rights into committee chairmanships, and so the Democratic congressional leadership was a drag on civil rights. Then for thirty years after 1965 southern Democrast opposed to civil rights voted northern Democrats in favor of civil rights into committee chairmanships, and so the Democratic congressional leadership was far, far to the left of the country as a whole--a fact reinforced by the destruction of Republican congressional power first by the Goldwater movement and second by Richard M. Nixon.

Today things are complicated. I think Bruce could do us all a good service by telling us a good chunk of this story that we Democrats prefer to forget. We prefer to remember things like this:

Sidney Blumenthal: Lady Bird Johnson and civil rights: The night before [Lyndon Johnson's] visit to New Orleans, Moyers sent him a campaign memo noting that "several people in New Orleans, including our advance men, feel the President should not refer to 'civil rights.'" On Oct. 9, 1964, Johnson delivered the most dramatic speech of the campaign.

Now, the people that would use us and destroy us first divide us.... But if they divide us, they can make some hay. And all these years they have kept their foot on our necks by appealing to our animosities, and dividing us. Whatever your views are, we have a Constitution and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have the law of the land, and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate voted for it and three-fourths of the Republicans. I signed it, and I am going to enforce it...

Then Johnson recounted the story of an old Southern senator who confided to Rep. Sam Rayburn, Johnson's mentor from Texas, "'Sammy, I wish I felt a little better. I would like to go back to old' -- and I won't call the name of the state; it wasn't Louisiana and it wasn't Texas -- 'I would like to go back down there and make them one more Democratic speech. I just feel like I have one in me. The poor old state, they haven't heard a Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is "Nigger, Nigger, Nigger!"'"...

And we would prefer to forget things like this from Texas Democratic Governor Coke Stevenson (a man whom Robert Caro, for some reason, prefers to Lyndon Johnson):

http://content.epnet.com/pdf10/pdf/1990/NRP/04Jun90/12030932.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=12030932&EbscoContent=dGJyMNXb4kSep7Y4yOvqOLCmrk%2bep7BSsKa4Sa6WxWXSAAAA&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGptU%2bwrrNPrOPfgeyk44Dt6fIA&S=R&D=fjh: [United States] Attorney General Francis Biddle wrote a distressed letter to [Texas] governor Stevenson urging him to bring the murderers to trail. Stevenson refused... he made a sly argument in favor of lunch mobs. "Certain members of the Negro race," he wrote, "from time to time furnish the setting for mob violence by the outrageous crimes which they commit."... Stevenson shrewdly played to the galleries...

Comments

[save_the-rustbelt]

Kudos for putting this into the public discourse, both Bruce and Brad.

Wasn't there a rumble at the 1972 Democratic convention about conflicting delgations from Georgia? My brain is fading with age.

And as much as I dislike LBJ (re Viet Nam), what he did in the mid 60s was truly remarkable.

More modern time have seen a lot of ridiculous racial politics from both parties, could that come to an end someday?

[RW]

Times have changed and the issue which political party plays the racism card most heavily remains complex but not so complex that Bartlett can honorably gloss the identity of the new Dixicrats: They're called Republicans and while they typically use substitute code for 'nigger' these days -- e.g., illegal alien, liberal, Willie Horton, welfare mother, macaque, etc. -- they're isn't much doubt about the message.

It was no accident that Reagan began his Southern campaign and related Southern Strategy in Philadelphia, Mississippi; the speech began with states rights, how unfairly (white) folks had been treated by the gu'bment and it d*mned sure didn't mention much less decry the town's murderous history. Can't speak for the rest of y'all but not a single white in my neck of the woods at the time failed to understand what Reagan was talking about.

[Matt]

Blacks are historically and unconsciously blamed for the Civil War, the major catastrophe in this nation, a war that never should have been fought.

The cause of the Civil War was the inability of Northern Republicans to compromise on a phase out of slavery.

The compromise was the Republicans agree to a ten year phase out with the federal government purchasing the surplus slave labor and taking it west for railroad work and settlements. Had the Republicans agreed to something like that,the Civil War would not have occured, the west would be partially populated with skilled civil engineers and technicians of Black descent, the South could have participated in Manifest Destinay, and we would have survived without the scars that still, to this day, cause continuing damage to the social fabric.

It was the Republicans inability to reconcile indentured servants with government subsidies for westward expansion.

[Emma Anne]

I think the switch came well before 1960. There were still Dixiecrats in the party, of course, but Truman integrated the armed forces, right (that is probably where the suggestion of 1948 came from)?

Certainly after LBJ, it is a shameless person (i.e. a Republican) who can claim that the Democratic party is the party of racism. RW is right: the Dixiecrats have a new name, and it is Republican.

[David]

"As it is, they are essentially ignored by both--the Democrats take them for granted, while Republicans have given up hope and don't even try to get black votes any more."

OK, but Bartlett is engaging in his own form of amnesia. As late as the 1950s there was significant Republican support among blacks, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had strong bipartisan support. But action on civil rights required major federal intervention into what had been considered local affairs--a fatal problem during the First Reconstruction--and the Republican Party had since the New Deal positioned itself as the anti-big-government party. Thus Republicans and southern conservatives were nuzzling each other well before the sixties--with the famous congressional coalition, and on a more intellectual level with the alliance of southern conservative intellectuals like the surviving Agrarians and Richard Weaver with the New Right of *National Review.* This alliance took over the Republican Party in 1964, and has shaped its strategy ever since. As a result, the party has *driven* black supporters from its ranks. Black people know this--and they'll recognize historical amnesia when they see it.

[sm]

What a timely issue, the racist history of the Democrats. We should definitely at this juncture all spend a lot of time thinking about how bad the Democrats are. Democrats like Jesse Helms, right? And Strom Thurmond, right?

[Kate G]

Not Ok. This isn't some kind of convenient political aphasia this is outright delusional self aggrandizement on Bartlett's part--but that's ok, I guess, as long as he doesn't really think his african american readers are as gullible as the actual white readers he's really aiming at. The disingenousness of writing a book like this for a largely white and republican readership and pretending its going to end up in the hands, and changing the hearts and minds, of actual african americans? Who is bartlett kidding here? Where do wingnut welfare books always end up? On Richard Scaife's remainder table/cruise line. Not over populated with african americans, I should think.

I'm sure african americans will very much enjoy being lectured to by the modern Republican Party about how much they owe them for civil rights, affirmative action, and pro-urban policies, child health insurance, excellent schools, good veterans benefits... What's that you say? The modern Republican party has nothing to say on these topics except slander, bigotry, and outright racism? Well hush my mouth! I'm as shocked and surprised as I know the rest of the country must be.

Kate G.

[anne]

African American voters have done and will do a fine job in deciding whether to support Democrats or Republicans, and recently they have been deciding by the most marked majorities with the most marked enthusiasm to support Democrats.

Leave it, however, to Bruce Bartlett and nutty Tom Tancredo to teach history and well-being to African Americans.

[anne]

Emma Anne:

"I think the switch came well before 1960."

The switch was already profound by the time in 1939 Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Marian Anderson to sing before the Lincoln Memorial after she had been denied Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

[Bruce Webb]

It is this kind of selective amnesia that always causes me to shake my head when Bartlett is described as a "honest conservative", when really it is clear that from head to toe he is a party-line Republican operative. There is nothing particularly dishonerable about that, I am a partisan Democrat and don't mind who knows it, but lets face it neither Bruce is a dispassionate neutral observer here.

Too there is a little disturbing note here. Bartlett is using this distorted view of history to promote racial tension between black and brown. That is he is proposing to redefine Nativism to include African Americans and exclude Mexican Americans (presumedly Republican friendly Cuban Americans getting a free pass). Which if his party had actually proposed anything to the actual interest of the black community beyond vague promises of an 'Ownership Society' this would be one thing, but as it is it seems more like an effort to split the working class along racial lines. (Which of course was the special trick of the old Southern Democrats and now the modern Southern Republicans: get working class whites to abandon class interest in favor of racial identity.)

[anne]

Kate:

"Not Ok. This isn't some kind of convenient political aphasia this is outright delusional self aggrandizement on Bartlett's part--but that's ok, I guess, as long as he doesn't really think his African American readers are as gullible as the actual white readers he's really aiming at."

Thank you.

[Count Cant]

lunch mobs?
What's wrong with lunch mobs?
And what's wrong with arguing in favor of them, whether slyly or not?

I mean, sure, I would rather get through the cafeteria line quicker, so I try to avoid the lunch mob.

But, hey, everybody has to eat.

[bakho]

Go here for a record of Blacks who have served in Congress.

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30378.pdf

The Democratic Party fought its own civil war against racists and racism and the progressives won. The losers joined the Republican Party. The religious right joined with the Republican Party in the aftermath of segregation and the rise of all-white segregated religious schools.

The Republican Party will once again begin to attract black voters only if they clean house and fight their own civil war. Can that happen in a party that is increasingly Southern and increasingly dominated by southern rednecks?

Hating immigrants is a BAD issue and one that has tarnished the Republicans from the very beginning with nativist elements and the incorporation of the know-nothings.

Bruce Bartlett needs to spend less time lecturing blacks and more time lecturing the whites in his own party.

[Count Cant]

switching to substance:

I agree with Kate G., Bruce W., and David that this is a deeply dubious, if not outright dishonest, endeavor on the part of Bartlett.

Arguments that Democrats are *really* the party of racism and Republicans are *really* the negro's friend reminds me of nothing so much as arguments that Hitler was actually a leftist rather than a rightist.

A mixture of bad history and pointless semantics, thinly smeared over a partisan hit-job.

[caveat bettor]

What happened to Senator Byrd? Did he get a pass?

[elliottg]

Bruce Bartlett needs to spend less time on Delong's site and more time shunned, ridiculed, and blasted. Republican's are shameless even the "honest" ones and they need to be held to account. Do you think institutional racism ended (or at least was moderated) because progressives engaged in a dailogue with "honest" bigots? It ended when the bigots were ostracized and either converted (even if only nominally) or lost power. That should be Bartlett's fate.

[Hackticus]

I look forward to his future companion book on "The Republican Party's Buried Present".

[Bruce Wilder]

"It is certainly true that up until some moment not all that long ago--1933? 1948? 1960?--"

Obviously, it was a long process, but there was a defining moment, when the Democrats took the mantle of civil rights away from the Republicans -- the Senate battle over the 1957 Voting Rights Act, proposed by Eisenhower, but masterfully enacted under the leadership of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

[Bruce Bartlett]

Matt is totally full of crap. The Republican Party didn't field its first presidential candidate until 1856. There was nothing the Republicans could have done to prevent war except totally abandon the reason for the party's existence: the abolition of slavery.

I won't respond to the other comments because I deal with all of these points in the book. I would note, however, that the Republican congressional victory in the 1946 elections was important because only Northern Democrats were defeated. As a consequence, Democrats from the South--the Democratic Party's base for the first 150 years of its existence--gained a lot of seniority in Congress, giving them power that lasted until Republicans retook the Senate in 1980.

[Emma Anne]

Bruce Bartlett, would you address Bakho's excellent point:

"The Democratic Party fought its own civil war against racists and racism and the progressives won. The losers joined the Republican Party. "

Anne, thanks for the reminder about Marion Anderson.

[robertdfeinman]

The Dem party was dual headed. It was an unhappy alliance between the racist Dixiecrats and the northern industrial/immigrant states.

To call it racist ignores the larger half. Did it compromise the ideals of the working class to hold on to power? Yes, sometimes. But it was responsible for the vast majority of progressive legislation in the 20th Century.

Now the Republicans are an uneasy alliance between the Main Street Republicans of middle America and the same rebranded Dixiecrats. The Republicans are now seeing for themselves what a bargain with the devil looks like.

[derek]

Black Americans! Why vote for the party that was wrong on race in the past, when you can vote for the party that is wrong on race in the present!

[derek]

All joking aside, Bruce Bartlett's hope is to lower the black vote for Democrats, a hope that, if realised will have exactly the same effect as increasing the black vote for Republicans, which is a much less realistic prospect.

The side effect, of reducing the total percentage of citizens engaged in the decision-making of the nation, is one he could not care less about.

[Rich C]

Emma Anne is right to the late 40's for signs of Democratic support for Civil Rights: in addition to Truman's desegregation of the armed forces, the 1948 Democratic convention endorsed a civil rights plank introduced by Hubert Humphrey which spurred Strom Thurmond's walk-out and rival presidential bid. Even earlier under FDR support for civil rights was growing inside the Democratic party; the New Deal did not mandate segregation, in contrast to Woodrow Wilson's imposition of segregation on the civil service in the teens.

[Lewis Carroll]

@caveatbettor:

Senator Byrd doesn't get a pass because he doesn't need one. He has actually owned up to his past, apologized for it, and changed his ways, admitting that he was wrong. And where it counts, he gets an 85% rating from the NAACP.

http://electoral-vote.com/evp2007/Senate/senator-ratings.html

On the other hand, Trent Lott, at the time the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, actually lamented the marginalization of Wallace's Dixiecrats because people failed to listen to Strom Thurmond. Yeah, we would have had a lot fewer problems with these uppity people if we had just let ole Strom carry the day in continuing segregation.

[Lewis Carroll]

@caveatbettor:

Senator Byrd doesn't get a pass because he doesn't need one. He has actually owned up to his past, apologized for it, and changed his ways, admitting that he was wrong. And where it counts, he gets an 85% rating from the NAACP.

http://electoral-vote.com/evp2007/Senate/senator-ratings.html

On the other hand, Trent Lott, at the time the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, actually lamented the marginalization of Wallace's Dixiecrats because people failed to listen to Strom Thurmond. Yeah, we would have had a lot fewer problems with these uppity people if we had just let ole Strom carry the day in continuing segregation.

[Bernard Yomtov]

The problem Bruce slides over, understandably, is that conservatism, of whatever party, has been racist. It is true that the Southern Senators who fought civil rights legislation were Democrats, but they had, by the 50's and 60's, little support from other Democrats. Northern Republicans were much more opposed to the 1964 CRA than Northern Democrats, who supported it overwhelmingly, for example.

And of course segregation got a ton of support from conservatives in the press, etc. Brad has quoted some of the lovely things National Review wrote, but that was hardly a lone voice.

So the whole thing is 3-card monte. Bruce's argument is that today's Democrats are the heirs of the conservative Southerners, whereas the truth is just the opposite.

[anne]

We have just experienced the most activist possible Supreme Court decision, a decision that has been wished for by Republicans for decades, and that is a reversal of the mandate that schools are to be integrated if there is to be equal oppostunity afforded children.

This does not mean that some children are to be harmed for the well-being of other children, but just that separate in inherently unequal and there must be a movement to integration.

Conservatives, Republican conservatives have insured a Supreme Court majority that would give over the mandate for integration and move us to a conceptual and practical re-segragation of schools as though before 1954. We are retuned to Plessy v Ferguson.

This is the radicalism on race of conservatives, a radicalism that David Brooks would immediatley applaud in explaining to us that people, we must understand, people prefer to be, well, segregated.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/opinion/29fri1.html?ex=1340769600&en=86f06a756d90d397&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 29, 2007

Resegregation Now

The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation's schools to integrate. Today, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.

Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation's driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn't always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.

Today, the court's radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated....

In an eloquent dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer explained just how sharp a break the decision is with history. The Supreme Court has often ordered schools to use race-conscious remedies, and it has unanimously held that deciding to make assignments based on race "to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society" is "within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities."

Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for "federalism," or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville programs. So did their supposed opposition to "judicial activism." This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.

The nation is getting more diverse, but by many measures public schools are becoming more segregated. More than one in six black children now attend schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority. This resegregation is likely to get appreciably worse as a result of the court's ruling.

There should be no mistaking just how radical this decision is. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said it was his "firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision." ...

[Zeno]

Let's not forget that Harry Truman, a man from Missouri, issued executive orders in 1948 to desegregate the armed services and to institute fair employment practices in the civilian agencies of the federal government. That was also the year that the mayor of Minneapolis, one Hubert Humphrey, led a successful effort as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention to adopt a strong civil rights plank in the party platform. Strom Thurmond and other southern Democrats staged a walkout. We were well rid of them, and their political descendants now pollute the politics of the Republican party.

[anne]

Imagine, we have a President who is ferociously battling to prevent keep millions of children from gaining government health insurance that are eligible for. We have women whose rights to Medicaid have been and are being limited, especially in the South. These are children and women in need, in need now, and they are of different races, but enough are African American and enough will remember.

[anne]

I watched a Georgia mother and daughter cry, because the diabetic daughter though eligible for government health insurance can gain no insurance. There is no Georgia insurance to be gained. The Republican Governor though thought the mother needed to complain to her Congressman (and don't dare blame the Governor). The Republican Congressman thought the mother needed to not to be so reliant on government and besides there was always charity. So there was only crying.

Remind me to become a Republican.

[anne]

What was the unique accomplishment that Brad DeLong attributed to the Republican Governor of Mississippi?

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/falling_indicat.html

April 23, 2007

Falling Indicators of Human Development in Mississippi
By Brad DeLong

Governor Haley Barbour manages to achieve a thing that many corrupt dictators have not: to lower the Human Development Index of the people he governs....

There are 2.8 million people in Mississippi. About 15% of the non-elderly population--make that 350,000--were on Medicaid. Cut Medicaid enrollments by 50,000, by 1/7. 42,000 babies born in Mississippi each year. For the share who die to jump from 0.97% to 1.14%... That's a less than 1/3000 chance. That's worth saying.

[Edited....]

[anne]

Could be there's a reason 90% of African Americans in Mississippi voted for John Kerry. Ya' think?

[Bruce Bartlett]

Harry Truman was a hero on civil rights and I say so in my book. But anyone who thinks FDR did anything except the bare minimum for blacks simply doesn't know the history. He sat on his hands during debate on the antilynching bill in 1938, maintained segregation of the military during WWII, aided Wilson in segregating the Navy Department when he was an assistant secretary, and wouldn't even allow the black and white staff at the White House and Hyde Park to eat together.

People can think what they want about the post-1964 positions of the two parties on civil rights, but as a matter of history we shouldn't forget that virtually every pre-Civil War Democratic president was a slaveowner and every single Jim Crow law in the South was enacted by Democratic governors and legislatures. And Northern Democrats just looked the other way--they even welcomed the Dixiecrats back into the party after 1948 as if nothing had happened.

[Kate G]

Bruce, you've got an admirable level of nerve--I'll give you that.

You know, Bruce--may I call you bruce? I feel I know you so well by this time--you seem to have fallen for a misperception common to people of your party. You think the rest of the country is as stupid as your dedicated voters. No one is "forgetting" anything about American history. I daresay many of us know quite a bit about our history and our peculiar racial history too. You are not a historian and the task you seem to have set yourself is not to delve deeply into a forgotten historical record but simply to revive old historical issues for the better delectation of the rubes and uneducated bottom feeders of your own party.

Politics is messy. Racial politics even messier. So, if I may say so, Nu? The only people in this universe who are unaware of the fact that blacks and non whites generally have been badly served by our democracy are, I'm really sad to tell you, white people. The people you are so kindly reminding of the various failings of our governing elites *already know it*--they don't have the luxury that you have of *not knowing their own history.* It wasn't optional for them.

So for whom is this book being written? It comes in a short but dishonorable line of political attack works by people like Anne "McCarthey was too right!" Coulter or (hack, hack, furball caught in my throat) Jonah "from hegel to whole foods" Goldberg and the rest of the revisionist crew attempting merely to influence the modern electorate. There's nothing wrong with influencing the modern electorate--that's called politics and I'm all for it. So what is stopping you from writing a great, big, big book on what the Republican party has done for african americans *lately.*? What is stopping you from trumpeting to the four winds the incredible, generous, thoughtful, policy provisions that your party has rammed through both houses and brought to the president's desk over and against Democratic opposition. No no, don't hurry. I'll wait. I've got a lot of time on my hands.

Oh, you're back? Just slap your list down on the table, I'm sure we'd all like to see it.

Still worrying about FDR? He dead. You know whose alive and kicking? Every southern Republican currently serving (in prison or in government service) who ever explained politely to the rest of the country that african americans were welfare queens, katrina cheats, drugged out, hopped up, single mothers. I'm not at all worried that your book will make the slightest dent in the historic alliance of the modern Democratic party and african americans. But you know as well as I that your book isn't written for any actual democratic voter--its simply a fig leaf for the abysmal record of modern day republicans. You can keep trying to disinterr FDR's corpse if you want. I'd say given your president's record of mass murder necrophilia is all that is holding your party together at this point, but please don't expect the rest of us to take it lying down. Unless we are in the classic phrase ROTFLOAO.

Kate G.

[otto]

"Governor Coke Stevenson (a man whom Robert Caro, for some reason, prefers to Lyndon Johnson)"

Caro would say that LBJ at the time of the election competing with Coke Stevenson had exactly the same public views on race as Coke Stevenson. And in terms of deviousness and dishonesty in that election, LBJ was far worse.

In 1948, LBJ:
"I am opposed to that program," Johnson continued. "I have voted AGAINST the so-called poll tax repeal bill; the poll tax should be repealed by those states which enacted them. I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill; the state can, and DOES, enforce the law against murder. I have voted against the FEPC [ Fair Employment Practices Commission ] ; if a man can tell you whom you must hire, he can tell you whom you can't hire."
http://www.robertcaro.com/CokeStevenson.html

[Lewis Carroll]

That's gonna leave a mark.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/opinion/10sat4.html?ex=1307592000&en=e780450411d0b046&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 10, 2006

One Man's Memory of What the Nation Wants to Forget
By BRENT STAPLES

Nations tend to write their histories by forgetting the shameful parts. In America, once-buried issues associated with slavery and the genocide against Native Americans have resurfaced and been incorporated into the national memory. But World War II has thus far been held apart as an era that is almost beyond reproach. Indeed, the people who led the country in the 40's and fought the war have been transformed from mere mortals — with faults like the rest of us — into sudden secular saints. They were dubbed "the greatest generation" and made out to be peerless in bravery and moral rectitude.

But when it comes to racial justice, any claim of moral superiority is false on its face. Franklin Roosevelt and the national political leadership failed when tested on the great moral issue of the 20th century. It was within Roosevelt's power to strike Jim Crow segregation from the military — which is precisely what Harry Truman would do three years after the war ended. Roosevelt, however, embraced apartheid segregation, actually spreading it from the Army, where it had been long established, into other major branches of the military.

Historians now agree that in the process, the military transplanted Jim Crow racism from the South into parts of the country where it had not previously existed. It further legitimized retrograde racial attitudes by enforcing apartheid policies in the towns where troops spent leisure time.

Beyond that, providing racially segregated living and training arrangements — as well as separate command structures — taxed the country's resources and created a logjam among black recruits. With too few segregated outfits to hold them, hundreds of thousands were either turned away when they volunteered or simply passed over by the Selective Service when they became eligible for the draft.

Black recruits who actually made it into the military were often greeted by a racial nightmare, especially when they waited out the war in Southern camps. There they faced legendary cruelty from white officers who resented having to command them at all, as well as hatred and harassment from townsfolk who were more favorably inclined toward German prisoners of war than toward black Americans in uniform. By the middle of the war, maltreatment of black soldiers had spawned race riots on so many military posts that the Army seemed to be shaking itself to pieces.

African-Americans who lived through this humiliating experience have typically been hesitant to discuss it, and most have taken their experiences with them to the grave. The distinguished historian John Hope Franklin, now 91 years old, broke the silence thunderously in his memoir, "Mirror to America," which offers a clear-eyed but also heart-wrenching portrait of one black family's struggle to serve with honor in a nation that regarded them as less than fully human.

Dr. Franklin was a newly minted Harvard Ph.D. at the start of the war. Like most black intellectuals at the time, he was well aware of the nightmare life that awaited educated black men who were drafted into the Army. He hoped to escape that fate by "selling" himself to the Navy, which was desperate for men after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The recruiter seemed stunned as Dr. Franklin reeled off his qualifications, which included shorthand and typing (at 75 words per minute) as well as his doctorate. But the recruiter, he writes, "said simply that I was lacking in one important qualification, and that was color."

He next turned to the War Department, which was hiring dropouts from Harvard to write the official history of the war. He submitted his qualifications, which included a book already in press, and even solicited support from the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, all to no avail. "I decided that they did not want to win the war," he told me in an interview, "they wanted to win the status of white people in this country." ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/books/review/27oshinsky.html?ex=1290747600&en=eb30e8dfd55f0f36&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

November 27, 2005

Making History
By DAVID OSHINSKY

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN is among a handful of scholars who have changed the way Americans view their past. It wasn't so long ago that mainstream histories of the United States ignored the experience of minorities or employed the sort of stereotypes that most readers today would find offensive. An African-American, raised and educated in an era of stifling race prejudice and legal segregation, Franklin, now 90 years old, has spent his career exposing the bigotry that once dominated American intellectual life and continues to infect society at large. His scholarship is his weapon.

"Mirror to America" is a riveting and bitterly candid memoir. Born in an all-black Oklahoma town in 1915, Franklin can remember his mother, a teacher, riding a horse to work "with a pistol in her saddlebag to protect herself from wolves or some vagabond who might attempt to molest her." In 1921 his father, an attorney, moved to Tulsa to open a law practice and buy a home for the family. A few months later, the black section of that city was demolished in one of the bloodiest race riots in American history. His father lost everything, postponing the family move for four years. In Tulsa, Franklin encountered a seething racism that kept the black community in a state of perpetual unease. There "was never a moment in any contact I had with white people," he writes about this time, "that I was not reminded that society as a whole had sentenced me to abject humiliation for the sole reason that I was not white."

A superb student, Franklin won a scholarship to Fisk, a distinguished black university in Nashville, where he intended to study law. There he met the two most influential people in his adult life: Theodore S. Currier, a young, white faculty member who would fuel Franklin's interest in "Negro history," and Aurelia Whittington, the woman who would become Franklin's wife and inseparable companion for the next 60 years. At Fisk, he recalls, "I became known as the person who had disciplined himself to the point of letting nothing interfere with his studies." When Currier learned that his favorite student had been admitted to graduate school in history but lacked the funds to attend, he borrowed $500 and placed it in Franklin's hand. "Money," he declared, "will not keep you out of Harvard!"

Having never lived among whites, Franklin navigated the Harvard campus of the 1930's like an anthropologist on an exotic field trip. On a given day, he might attend Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.'s seminar in American intellectual history and then walk to the law school to hear Felix Frankfurter lecture about the Constitution. But he can still recall the "darky" jokes that were told in his history classes. And he could hardly believe the shabby treatment endured by the handful of Jewish students in the program (including his friend Oscar Handlin). Prejudice, he discovered, came in many forms....

[andres]

Kate, I think you're foaming at the mouth again ;-)

Still, Kate G. pungently says most of my own thoughts on the matter. The only thing I have to add is that we _don't know_ what FDR, Wilson, and other prominent northern Democrats of their time actually thought about segregation and Jim Crow. My guess is that their position to it was similar to Jefferson's on slavery: opposed in theory, but too pragmatically aware of the southern backlash potential to offer any opposition in practice. Without southern electoral votes, the Democrats would not have won the presidency in 1912, 1916, 1932, as well as FDR's subsequent reelections. As heartless as it sounds, I think Wilson and FDR made the right choice. By LBJ's time, things were different.

And by Wilson's time, mind you, the Republicans had become the party of big business and they no longer cared a fig about desegregating the south; in fact they were probably against it because they wanted cheab black labor migrating to the northern cities.

The real question was not which political party would finally take blacks seriously, it was _when_ would blacks become effectively organized politically so that their demands could no longer be ignored. Thanks to King, Malcolm X, Evars, and many others, this happened at a time when the (northern) Democrats were much more in tune with blacks' demand than the Republicans. And for Republicans, there is no getting around that.

[Kate G]

I don't mean to beat a dead horse--that, as far as I can see, is probably a vice best left to Senator Vitter and the rest of the pro-marriage crowd--but it seems to me something needs to be said about the overall rhetorical strategy Mr. Bartlett is advocating. Because its become really common and I think it deserves its own neo-logism if it hasn't already been defined by those greeks.

Help me out here, what is the term for an argument that goes like this "we were really evil but you were more evil for *siding with us* " Isn't that the central argument of the lost-war-of-Iraq? The Democrats *failed to stop Bush* from carrying out a war he and his party advocated for and pushed through. They are failing now to prevent Bush and the Republicans from throwing more soldiers into the hopper. So the war is their fault.

See how easy that is? When the Republican party does the bidding of the republican voter and a republican president then, so long as things go well, they claim the moral high ground and call the Dems traitors and losers. When the war starts to go badly they look around and complain "if it was such a bad idea in the first place why didn't you stop us?"

I see an absolutely identical move in Mr. Bartlett's new book. The central thesis, as he has expressed it here, isn't that the Republican party isn't racist, or that the republican party in the post civil war era had any accomplishments in the area of civil rights, education, affirmative action etc... His main argument is that the Democrats were *just as bad* as the republicans. Conveniently, he drops his story at precisely the moment that the Democratic party strongly and seriously throws its most racist component over board where they swim happilly to their new native shore in the republican party.

Can someone tell me what greek term best describes this rhetorical strategy other than "I know you are but what am I" or, for even more greeker greek "chutzpah?"

Kate G.

[caveat bettor]

Lewis Carroll, thanks for the update on Senator Byrd. I know George Wallace made a similar turnaround. Now since Wilson, FDR, and LBJ have been invoked, what about them? Let's say Japanese American internment. Or are you all with Michelle Malkin and fronting for FDR on this?

[anne]

Agreed, Kate and Andres. The change as far as I understand begins during the 1930s, and I wonder how influential Eleanor Roosevelt was here. The segregation of the armed services during the World War however was a terrible moral error and contributed to domestic civil rights havoc.

[RW]

Kate G., I've been thinking about that phenomenon too in the context of conservative complaints about the 'left-wing media' -- which we all assume to mean the corporate media that used to have a putative progressive bias until, well, it became the corporate media and didn't (or something like that) -- that, in any case, should not have complained the way they did because that is what caused conservatives to refuse to see reality and act appropriately (or something like that).

Basically it seems to boil down to: Y'all made us despise you and it's now y'alls fault that we massively screwed the pooch because we couldn't listen to you ...because we despised you.

I honestly don't know if either Greek or Yiddish are up to naming this phenomenon but it appears to involve a cross between Catch 22 and guilt avoidance and, quite possibly, a form of psychosis for starters.

[Bruce Bartlett]

Some of the more hysterical reactions above suggest to me that I have struck a nerve. I am not going to further argue the point of an entire 120,000 word book in the comments section of someone else's blog. There will be plenty of time to revisit this issue when my book is out in January.

[elliottg]

But Bruce, noone here is gonna read your book.

[Kate G]

Struck a nerve? Hardly. And most people, when the major flaws in their thesis is pointed out to them prior to publication would work a little harder to deal with the issue prior to the first printing. Errata slips and embarrasment are much more costly than just doing a good job the first time around.

As for us: I'm afraid you used up the five seconds of attention your "thesis" is worth already. But no doubt your fellow travellers in obsfuscatory historical revisionism will more than make up for the rest of us who will not bother to read your book. If you had anything worthwhile to say I think you could have found time even on the "comments section of someone else's blog" if you'd wanted to. Do come back when you have that list of important things the Republican party has done for african americans (or, frankly, any non-white person) since they've been in power over the last 12 years. Hell, I'll give you all the way back to Reconstruction if you want. Now *that* would be worth reading.

Kate G.

[Done With This One]

"Some of the more hysterical reactions above suggest to me that I have struck a nerve."

This may be the most pathetic comment I have ever read. How did Brad decide that Bruce Bartlett is an honest ANYTHING?

[Joe]

Yes, Bruce, you've struck a nerve. You've struck the olfactory nerve with the distinctive odor of your BS.

[Count Cant]

I give full marks to Kate G. for accurate expressions of justified outrage.

But I think derek does a better job of concisely characterizing what Bartlett's endeavor really amounts to:

This book is going to be an exercise in voter suppression, pure and simple. Like "voter caging", or poll-taxes, or posting signs in black neighborhoods telling people to vote on the wrong day.

There are no new historical or theoretical insights to be gained from it. The entire point is simply to frighten black voters away from the Democratic party, by bringing up irrelevant episodes from the past.

[anne]

Kate:

"Do come back when you have that list of important things the Republican party has done for African Americans (or, frankly, any non-white person) since they've been in power over the last 12 years. Hell, I'll give you all the way back to Reconstruction if you want."

[anne]

Thinking through the intelligent complaints on the thread and adding to Kate's fine annoyance, there will long be a need to examine our special history of injustice with a hope of continually moving beyond.

These recent generations however have shown a growing political recognition of our history of racial injustice that increasing numbers of Democrats and for a time more Republicans sought to lessen and end. The 1960s however show a change that was accentuated in the 1970s and has continued. Republicans became the political party that increasingly stood against civil rights development and played to rather than against a sorry persisting legacy of racial prejudice.

[vtcodger]

A minor point, but the Republicans were pretty good on civil rights as late as 1964. In June of 1964, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen delivered 27 of 33 Republican votes for cloture -- the key vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64_cloturespeech.htm

If I recall correctly Goldwater was one of the six Republicans who voted against cloture. Says all that needs to be said about that guy I think.

Unfortunately, the course of the Republican party since then has been pretty much downhill including skimming a considerable amount of Dixiecrat scum into their ranks. I don't know how one is going to gloss that decent into darkness over.

[vtcodger]

A minor point, but the Republicans were pretty good on civil rights as late as 1964. In June of 1964, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen delivered 27 of 33 Republican votes for cloture -- the key vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See http://www.congresslink.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64_cloturespeech.htm

If I recall correctly Goldwater was one of the six Republicans who voted against cloture. Says all that needs to be said about that guy I think.

Unfortunately, the course of the Republican party since then has been pretty much downhill including skimming a considerable amount of Dixiecrat scum into their ranks. I don't know how one is going to gloss that decent into darkness over.

[anne]

VT Codger,

"A minor point, but the Republicans were pretty good on civil rights as late as 1964. In June of 1964, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen delivered 27 of 33 Republican votes for cloture -- the key vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

The change, which I do not really understand, seems to have come with the anti-civil rights stance and presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. Though Goldwater was thoroughly beaten, the anti-civil rights ideology was increasingly accepted by Republicans and turned to an express strategy. Playing to divisiveness evidently fitted the personality of Richard Nixon, and a personal commitment to civil rights of Lyndon Johnson was turned from by Nixon.

[quartz]

It struck a nerve with me all right. How any Republican can claim, with a straight face, that African Americans should give the Republicans more credit at time when the Bush Justice Department, blatantly and with impunity, has turned the Voting Rights Division into the Black Vote Suppression Division, especially at a time when the President is invokes democracy and freedom (for oither countries) in every sentence, is totally shameless.

[Kate G]

I see I've got a well deserved reputation here as the ranter not the reasoner. There's some truth to that. By the time I've put down my scholarly reading and regular life activities to post here I'm pretty much over my budget for outrage. That's because Bartlett's work is just the tip of the iceberg of mendacity, corruption, and bald faced attacks on democracy here (and abroad) that have been the hallmark of the Bush administration. Bartlett and his ilk want to come to each new event/book/article completely innocent of everything that went on before, or everything that will follow th epublication of their new insight. They are, to their own minds, eternally virginal. I was just minding my own business when I saw a hole in the historical record that I thought I'd plug is Bruce's version of reality. The rest of us, having paid agtention, see what Quartz et al have pointed out that this is simply voter suprression by any other name.

Today in the paper, or yesterday, it was revealed that the administration made a practgice of swinging through "god forsaken" areas of the country (read: poor, black) with promises around election time. We already know that they were simultnaneously promising their white racist base (ooh! harsh language! my bad!) that they would never appease that durned democratic "interest group" with any kind of gubmint giveaways (viz: katrina). How are we to think of that contradiction? Bruce et al would have us professionally forget, each time, the various component parts of the grand republican strategy. Its pure accident that they promise goodies at election time while cutting the rug out of necessesities at budget time. Its pure accident that they wrongfully and feloniously use faulty "felons" lists to prevent african americans from voting *at all* while promoting after the fact military votes. But look, once the Republican party stood for something other than pure tax cuts and bigotry! Bruce says so.

I can't figure out which is more insulting: that bruce thinks Brad's readers don't know their political history or that he thinks *african americans* don't know it. Or that he assumes that one readership isn't the other.

Kate G.

[anne]

No; I think "Kate" is always wonderfully thoughtful, and look forward to every comment. As for Bruce Bartlett's entry and comment, I find them typically awful and should have been more forceful in making the point from the beginning.

There is a determined effort among wild conservatives not to write but to distort history and this is presently especially so with the history of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency.

I agree completely with Kate, but, alas, think more slowly.

[anne]

Bruce Bartlett:

"Furthermore, I believe that the growing problem of immigration may be a wedge issue for Republicans because blacks share their concerns about it. I think it is revealing that Congressman Tom Tancredo--a one-issue, anti-immigration candidate--was the only Republican who showed up to speak to the NAACP convention on July 12."

Republicanism pitching discrimination is precisely what Bruce Bartlett is about justifying. So much for wedging.

[Lewis Carroll]

@caveatbettor,

Wow,

"Wilson, FDR and LBJ have been invoked". Is that like "mistakes were made". Seems an awful lot like it, since I didn't invoke them.

But if you insist, the point really was made quite well by Kate and others earlier in this post. My reading of them was that nobody explicitly said, nor implied, that those other people were perfect. Nor that the Democratic Party itself has a *perfect* history when it comes to race relations.

Really, the point is that some people, including Bruce Bartlett, want to elevate in importance the particular swath of the Democratic Party which abandoned the party once it became clear that the Party would stand for civil rights legislation and desegregation in the 50s and 60s.

It is true that prior to that, when because of the impracticality of passing that legislation, a segregationist or at least one who didn't really care about civil justice could comfortably reside in either party. However, once the Johnson administration made it explicit policy to support the civil rights movement, that portion of the Party made its choice and created its own party, only to be successfully courted a few years later in the Republicans' "Southern Strategy".

So the fetishization of *Party Membership* prior to the 60s as some kind of signifier of commitment to justice, only serves, as others here have pointed out, as a distraction from what the Republican Party of today is. A reality that African American voters are not too stupid to see.

[Lewis Carroll]

@caveatbettor,

Wow,

"Wilson, FDR and LBJ have been invoked". Is that like "mistakes were made". Seems an awful lot like it, since I didn't invoke them.

But if you insist, the point really was made quite well by Kate and others earlier in this post. My reading of them was that nobody explicitly said, nor implied, that those other people were perfect. Nor that the Democratic Party itself has a *perfect* history when it comes to race relations.

Really, the point is that some people, including Bruce Bartlett, want to elevate in importance the particular swath of the Democratic Party which abandoned the party once it became clear that the Party would stand for civil rights legislation and desegregation in the 50s and 60s.

It is true that prior to that, when because of the impracticality of passing that legislation, a segregationist or at least one who didn't really care about civil justice could comfortably reside in either party. However, once the Johnson administration made it explicit policy to support the civil rights movement, that portion of the Party made its choice and created its own party, only to be successfully courted a few years later in the Republicans' "Southern Strategy".

So the fetishization of *Party Membership* prior to the 60s as some kind of signifier of commitment to justice, only serves, as others here have pointed out, as a distraction from what the Republican Party of today is. A reality that African American voters are not too stupid to see.

[andres]

Kate G:

"I see I've got a well deserved reputation here as the ranter not the reasoner. There's some truth to that."

Not at all. It's not a rant provided you have reason on your side and give a good explanation why. Don't confuse ranting with reasoned outrage. And please don't take me seriously when I say you're foaming at the mouth and other silliness.

anne strikes the right note. Bartlett seems to think that it is a good thing that Republicans can use "wedge issues" that set one minority group against another. To use discrimination as a wedge issue for political points is a despicable tactic, and is all too emblematic of the Willie Horton/Karl Rove era of Republican politicking.

[anne]

Well stated, Lewis.

[BillCross]

Bartlett's argument seems very reminiscent of the creationist/ID argument -- the other guys had a problem once, so you should back my views instead irrespective of how my view comports with reality

[Michael Sullivan]

Still, Kate G. pungently says most of my own thoughts on the matter. The only thing I have to add is that we _don't know_ what FDR, Wilson, and other prominent northern Democrats of their time actually thought about segregation and Jim Crow. My guess is that their position to it was similar to Jefferson's on slavery: opposed in theory, but too pragmatically aware of the southern backlash potential to offer any opposition in practice.

I don't know about FDR, but I think you've got Wilson wrong here. I was surprised to read some of the history, but he really was an out and out racist. In the late 19th century race relations were better and African Americans significantly less oppressed than from 1900-1960, when the dormant Klan came back. One of the bits that gets left out of the mainstream (read: white) history books is that Wilson was a major opinion leader in that change.

Bruce Bartlett doesn't appear to deserve Delong's recognition as an "honest" conservative. Kate G. is hardly ranting. Don't apologize Kate, you've taken this nonsense argument down cleanly and precisely. Calling this ranting is a classic tactic of the privileged: "Calm down! Why are you so angry?"

Bruce hasn't offered an iota of evidence against your claims in this thread merely the promise that "that's addressed in the book", which of course it isn't, because the evidence which would address your questions doesn't exist.

It's become very clear by BBs participation in this thread that he has little interest in ferreting out truth and exposing himself to discussion.

Bartlett is not making an honest mistake here, he's deliberately trying to whitewash the modern republican party's disturbing record on race issues so as not to scare off mainstream white voters who aren't full-on bigots but don't understand the code or their privilege well enough to run screaming from standard republican race rhetoric. He's doing his best to give them a little incentive not to listen to anyone who might educate them.

BillCross: well said.

[Michael Sullivan]

Goddamn it Brad, when are you going to let people use italics on this site?! Or at least put up some kind of warning, so we remember to quote in some other way.

[anne]

Michael Sullivan, fine comment. John Hope Franklin is regretful about a quiesence about Franklin Roosevelt, who he admires anyway. Eleanor Roosevelt is especially admired. I take the middle 1930s as the beginning of a struggling turn to racial justice.

[robertdfeinman]

A few random points:

1. Bruce Bartlett has already been chased off his newspaper perch and into the world of books (where he doesn't have to answer to critics the next day).

2. Books have no impact on political discourse anymore. Sometimes the personal revelations make for good gossip, but no one pays any attention when it comes time to vote. They are used for ego messaging or self-justification.

3. FDR is dead. It's time to stop trying to justify present policies by distorting history (this goes for both sides). The voters want to know what you are going to do for me tomorrow.

4. The GOP has failed to deliver to its "base". It has not managed (or even intended) to ban abortion, restrict immigration, prevent "terrorism", solve the teen sex "problem", control drug use, cut down on crime, restore family values, or even make the country into a theocracy. It has managed to make the rich, richer (it didn't promise to do this to the voters in Kansas, however.)

As the history of Prohibition shows if the greyhound does manage to catch the rabbit the race ends. Not because the dog won, but because the voters no longer have any reason to support you. Once Prohibition was passed the temperance movement faded, and when Prohibition was repealed it didn't reappear. Movements need to keep the members in a continual state of outrage. This is how they get contributions and votes. That GOP supporters are so slow to catch on is what amazed Thomas Frank.

Don't pick on Bruce Bartlett, he's bailing as fast as he can. Unfortunately the hole in the boat keeps getting bigger.

[Matt]

Bruce says:

"Matt is totally full of crap. The Republican Party didn't field its first presidential candidate until 1856. There was nothing the Republicans could have done to prevent war except totally abandon the reason for the party's existence: the abolition of slavery."

What was the real reason for the existance of the Republican party? Look at the platform:

The first platform in 1856:

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch16_03.htm

"Many of its members had been Whigs, and their influence was seen in the economic planks that advocated internal improvements financed by the federal government. Abolitionists and Free Soilers, coming from the Whig and Democratic parties,

Then in 1860:

From http://www.apnotes.net/ch19.htm:

"The Republican platform had an appeal to nearly every part of the nation. For the free-soilers, non-extension of slavery; for the northern manufacturers, a protective tariff; for the immigrants, no abridgment of rights; for the Northwest, a Pacific railroad; for the West, internal improvements at federal expense; and for the farmers, free homesteads (plots of land) from the public domain."

Had the Republicans simply been the anti-slavery party, they would have gone the way of the earlier Liberty Party. The civil war in the Kansas territory would have smouldered for tome time

The difference between the Liberty Party and the Republicans was the difference in using the expansion of federal government to promote the expansion out west.

No one, even Southerners at the time, thought slavery was profitable except for a few labor intensive southern crops. Clay, with wide, not majority, support in the South had been advocating for gradual removal os slavery, Webster agreed. The compromise of 1850 abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C.

Even the Dred Scott decision would have been met by minimal prosecutorial support, just like the illegal immigration problem today. The fugitive Slave act was accepted as part of the Compromise of 1850.

What was Freemont and Lincoln's thing? The federal government cannot support slavery's expansion west. If Lincoln believed that, then he should believe the federal government should limit subsidies for manifest destiny and Northern manufacturing.

At the time, the south was happy, it flourished during the 1857 panic and it got the Dred Scott decision from the Supreme Court. It was in no hurry to secede.

Had we found a way to muddle along another 10 years, the civil war could have been avoided and slavery would eventually go away.