Following Donald Trump’s election victory, social media platforms had been flooded with memes depicting the wailing and gnashing of enamel amongst Democrats bemoaning their loss. A few of these memes took a dig on the alleged historic predilection of Democrats for slavery. In a time when the topic of slavery is deemed to be so delicate that the language police scold everybody on the way to describe slaves—the brand new rule being that one should say “enslaved individual” and never “slave”—it’s ironic to see a topic that’s often handled with exaggerated solemnity and respect being subjected to derision and mirth underneath the guise of taking potshots on the Democrats.
The precept appears to be that we must always not communicate disrespectfully about slaves, except the goal is to poke enjoyable at Democrats. A typical rendition of this puerile humor is that “Democrats haven’t been this upset since Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves!” A t-shirt with Lincoln’s face emblazoned on it declares, “I haven’t seen the Democrats this mad since we took away their slaves!”—which is farcical to anybody who is aware of the true Lincoln had no need to remove anybody’s slaves. The memes wouldn’t appear fairly so witty in the event that they learn, “Democrats are upset at dropping their enslaved individuals!”
Within the immigration debates, the Democrats’ opposition to mass deportation can be linked to a need to maintain slaves, scary low cost pictures about how hilarious it’s that Democrats are questioning who will choose their cotton if their slaves are freed. Purveyors of this sort of political foolery additionally hyperlink the Democratic Get together to the KKK, with a play on the spelling as “DemoKKKratic” Get together coupled with images of the KKK parading in New York waving the American flag. The premise of all this buffoonery is that in the present day’s Democratic Get together might be traced again in an unbroken line to the Democratic Get together of the nineteenth century, and that in the present day’s Democrats can subsequently be criticized by reference to what their “predecessors” did in centuries previous. Paul Gottfried captures very properly the hypocrisy of Republicans who resort to nineteenth century analogies in an try and sign their advantage, declaring that the Republican grasp of the political gamers in 1850 is totally flawed:
The social revolutionaries of the 1850s weren’t white Southerners however abolitionist Republicans, who in lots of circumstances expressed assist for the violence in opposition to slaveowners unleashed by John Brown and his followers.
Please word that I’m not defending human bondage any greater than I’m the violence dedicated by its extra agitated opponents. However I discover no trustworthy purpose to liken a battle that befell 170 years in the past to the one that’s now raging between self-defined conventional People and cultural radicals. Republicans and approved conservatives could also be providing their comparability as advantage signaling, which can be why they extol Reconstruction, an unlucky improvement that did nothing to additional race relations or constitutional authorities in our nation.
These “Republicans and approved conservatives” appear to not remember that their analogies are traditionally illiterate. There isn’t a fact to the concept the Democrats of the nineteenth century held any of the identical beliefs and values as in the present day’s Democrats. The lowbrow comedy about Democrats being defenders of slavery is a reference to Southern Democrats who had been described as “the political heirs of Thomas Jefferson.” Thomas Jefferson was a slave proprietor, however solely those that know nothing about him would counsel that his primary legacy is a protection of slavery. Quite the opposite, as Lew Rockwell explains, Jeffersonian ideas of particular person rights and “states’ rights” are the important thing rules that impressed the secession of the Southern states:
That’s the reason the political heirs of Thomas Jefferson, mid-Nineteenth-century Southern Democrats, held statewide political conventions (and fashionable votes) to resolve whether or not or not they’d proceed to stay within the voluntary union of the Founding Fathers. Article 7 of the US Structure defined that the states may be a part of (or not be a part of) the union in accordance with votes taken at state political conventions by representatives of the individuals (not state legislatures) and, consistent with the phrases of the Declaration, additionally they had a proper to vote to secede from the federal government and create a brand new one.
The notion that those that voted to secede did so purely or primarily as a result of they needed to maintain slaves—the topic of up to date hilarity—is speculative at greatest. Though this isn’t the place to evaluate that debate, readers could want to seek the advice of Clyde Wilson’s article “Why The Struggle Was Not About Slavery.” In making an attempt to grasp these historic occasions, some commentators have drawn a distinction between secession and conflict, arguing that though the conflict was not “about slavery,” however the choice to secede was motivated by slavery. Those that draw that distinction search to emphasise that, whatever the causes for secession, it was not inevitable that conflict ought to consequence. Whereas that distinction could also be precious in understanding the descent from political dispute to armed battle, it stays the case that within the political debates surrounding each secession and conflict there’s a broad overlap of rules and insurance policies which are all essential in understanding the values of Southern Democrats. Focusing solely on slavery would require one to disregard all the things else ever stated by Southern Democrats about independence and liberty, decreasing all of them to puppet figures whose solely objective in life was sustaining slavery. Wilson observes:
Many times I encounter individuals who say that the South Carolina secession ordinance mentions the protection of slavery and that one truth proves past argument that the conflict was attributable to slavery. The primary States to secede did point out a risk to slavery as a motive for secession. In addition they talked about a long time of financial exploitation and the seizure of the widespread authorities for the primary time ever by a sectional social gathering declaredly hostile to the Southern States. Have been they to be a completely exploited minority, they requested? This was vital to individuals who knew that their fathers and grandfathers had based the Union for the safety and good thing about ALL the States.
Thus, for instance, in his well-known “Cornerstone Speech” that many individuals affiliate solely with a protection of slavery, Alexander Stephens begins by discussing the significance of the Structure:
This new structure, or type of authorities, constitutes the topic to which your consideration will probably be partly invited. In reference to it, I make this primary normal comment: it amply secures all our historical rights, franchises, and liberties. All the nice rules of Magna Charta are retained in it. No citizen is disadvantaged of life, liberty, or property, however by the judgment of his friends underneath the legal guidelines of the land. The nice precept of non secular liberty, which was the glory and pleasure of the outdated structure, remains to be maintained and secured. All of the necessities of the outdated structure, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American individuals, have been preserved and perpetuated.
This preoccupation with the Structure is the hallmark of the Jeffersonian Democrat. Charley Reese explains the values of the Jeffersonian Democrat:
And what, you would possibly properly ask, is a Jeffersonian Democrat? He’s an individual who hasn’t forgotten that the sovereign states created the federal authorities, not the reverse, as some in the present day appear to imagine. He believes that what the Structure created was a republic of sovereign states, and that the rigorously restricted powers assigned to the federal authorities had been all of the powers it had, in peace or in conflict. He believes the Structure is a binding contract, not a rubbery doc that may imply something a choose or a politician says it means. He believes in a system of checks and balances. Briefly, he believes within the Declaration of Independence.
Whereas cardboard cutout historic characters could lend themselves extra readily to jokes and memes, the obsession with slavery ignores many different essential options of the connection between North and South, together with the long-stated need in South Carolina and New England to decouple their states from one another. The thinly-veiled contempt of New England puritans for South Carolina conservatives was mirrored, for instance, within the exaggerated political reactions to the notorious altercation between Preston Brooks and Charles Sumner. Michael Martin observes that modern analysts tried to hyperlink this dispute to the eventual outbreak of conflict, though he factors out that, “In actuality, Sumner’s speech [in which he slandered South Carolina for five days straight] in all probability created extra division than Brooks’ caning.”
The identical antagonism may also be seen within the Northern secession motion mentioned by Tom DiLorenzo, highlighting the sentiment expressed by Massachusetts, when she contemplated seceding in 1803, that, “A Northern confederacy would unite congenial characters, and current a fairer prospect of public happiness; whereas the Southern States, having a similarity of habits, is likely to be left to handle their affairs in their very own method.” Senator James Hillhouse of Connecticut stated on the time that, “The Japanese States should and can dissolve the Union and kind a separate authorities.” Senator Timothy Pickering from Massachusetts thought, “The individuals of the East can’t reconcile their habits, views, and pursuits with these of the South and West.”
This temporary overview illustrates {that a} tunnel-vision deal with slavery as the one challenge (or the principle challenge) price finding out in understanding political historical past obscures many different occasions important to understanding the period. Depicting Southern Democrats as males whose solely concern in life was to keep away from Republicans taking away their slaves is simplistic and juvenile. It impedes the efforts to accumulate a greater understanding of who Southern Democrats had been, and erases from public view their deep dedication to Jeffersonian beliefs. Of those males, Reese concludes:
So so as to add to the definition of Jeffersonian Democrats, they had been a majority of the Founding Fathers, a majority who fought the American Revolution, a majority who wrote the Structure, and a majority who fought for Southern independence. No surprise the dear few nonetheless extant make big-government lovers so nervous.
