Roe and Dred Scott

Man-on-Dog Santorum is taking a lot of heat for this statement:

Potential 2012 presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) doesn't understand how President Obama could not answer whether a "human life" is protected by the Constitution from the moment of conception: "The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person -- human life is not a person, then -- I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

Jamelle Bouie is dismissive of Santorum drawing a straight line between slavery and abortion, writing:

Of course, it should go without saying that this is unadulterated bullshit. It's one thing to oppose abortion -- reasonable people can disagree -- it is something else entirely to compare the practice to chattel slavery, or worse, the Holocaust. Even if you grant fetal personhood, there is nothing in the "experience" of a fetus that compares to the extreme violence and depravity of slavery, and its effect on people -- children, teenagers, and adults -- with hopes, dreams, and desires.

On some level, anti-abortion activists know this; otherwise, they'd be in armed revolt. That they aren't is revealing; far from an accurate take on the situation, the abortion/slavery analogy is a fantasy for self-righteous ideologues, who want to believe that theirs is a great moral crusade, when in truth, it's nothing of the sort.

But while I agree that the moral equivalence is false, I also recognize that this is nothing more than my personal opinion. I'm not sure how many pro-life fanatics that Bouie or other progressive writers know, but I have known more than a few, now and going back to my childhood. And Bouie sells them short when calling this "unadulterated bullshit." Santorum may be doing this cynically. But most certainly there are millions of Americans who do believe it.

In fact, there's a lot of similarities between abolitionists and anti-abortion fanatics. Progressives don't like to admit this because we revere one group and loathe the other. But it's true. Like abolitionists, anti-abortionists believe in the deepest part of their soul that abortion is the greatest evil the world faces, an abomination in the face of God. Moreover, they believe that those who are pro-slavery or pro-choice are facing an eternity burning in the fires of Hell.

This is why I'm so ambivalent about John Brown and outright scared over how people use his memory today--those who love John Brown today aren't usually my friends.

Moreover, the idea that if anti-abortionists really believed their rhetoric that they'd be engaging in violent insurrection both misremembers the Civil War and doesn't provide a very subtle understanding of human nature. With the exception of John Brown, no abolitionists committed violent actions to overthrow the slave power before 1861. Moreover, it was the South who committed violence against the nation to protect slavery, not the North invading the South to end the peculiar institution.

For the vast, vast majority of abolitionists and anti-abortionists, personal violence is beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. They might support other people doing it. They might even give money toward it. But they are not going to pick up a gun themselves.

It does progressives no good to ignore the fact that anti-abortionists are in fact engaged in a moral crusade. It's not up to us to decide what is a moral crusade and what is not. I think they are crazy and that Santorum's statement is offensive, but that's beside the point. Anti-abortionists do in fact believe in their own rhetoric. For them, this is the greatest moral crusade since abolitionism. And we need to deal with this.

Remembering 1861

If you haven't been following the Times' columns on the coming of the Civil War, they are really quite good. I like them not only because they tell key stories of American history, but because most of them don't forecast the known future. They try to tell the stories from the perspective of people in late 1860, when Lincoln was a newly-elected president from whom no one knew what to expect, when it was unclear what Virginia and Tennessee would do, and when everyone realized James Buchanan had no idea what he was doing. OK, that last part has been well-known since 1860, but the deifying of Lincoln sometimes has made it hard to understand his growth.

The blog here has been somewhat content-lite of late because I am so overwhelmingly busy, but there's great historical writing going on all over the internet, including at the Times. Here's today's great piece on Harriet Tubman.

Decoration Day

While we remember our fallen soldiers today, I want to remember some true heroes--the approximately 364,000 American soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865 suppressing Southern treason, holding the Union together, and freeing the slaves. I know these men (and a few women) fought for different reasons. Some were more noble than others. Not everyone cared about slavery, though a lot did so. And I know that not everyone who fought for the Confederacy necessarily acted to preserve slavery. But I do know that for whatever reason they fought, the Union soldiers died defending a noble and just cause and the Southern soldiers died to defend the rights of states to commit treason and to enslave, rape, and murder black people. Too often we forget the real reason for Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was known in the late 19th century, when the South refused to recognize it as a national holiday.

Historical Image of the Day

This week's historical image theme is dead horses in American history.

Dead horses after Battle of Gettysburg, 1863

Historical Image of the Day

Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, 1851-74

To close my Senator series, I want to talk about somebody a lot of people were suggesting was one of the greatest senators in history, Charles Sumner.

Sumner's courage and bravery cannot be questioned. But what I think keeps him down a bit is his lack of skills as a legislator. He's most famous for being beaten by South Carolina senator Preston Brooks during an anti-slavery speech on the senate floor in 1856. Because it was on the senate floor, Brooks was immune to charges. Brooks nearly killed Sumner with his cane; Sumner was out of the Senate for 3 years recovering from his injuries.

This happening to Sumner was far from unexpected. A biographer says this about him:

Distrusted by friends and allies, and reciprocating their distrust, a man of "ostentatious culture," "unvarnished egotism," and "'a specimen of prolonged and morbid juvenility,'" Sumner combined a passionate conviction in his own moral purity with a command of nineteenth-century "rhetorical flourishes" and a "remarkable talent for rationalization." Stumbling "into politics largely by accident," elevated to the United States Senate largely by chance, willing to indulge in "Jacksonian demagoguery" for the sake of political expediency, Sumner became a bitter and potent agitator of sectional conflict. Carving out a reputation as the South's most hated foe and the Negro's bravest friend, he inflamed sectional differences, advanced his personal fortunes, and helped bring about national tragedy."

I think this is fairly accurate. I imagine the Republicans have more equivalents to Sumner today--he kind of acted like Michelle Bachmann. He was a provocateur far more than a legislator. He did play a leading role in attacking Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction, but he was far from alone in that sentiment and I'm not sure that he did anything unusual in his leadership on this issue.

What did Sumner do to get beaten by Preston Brooks? I'm quoting from his Wikipedia entry, but it's accurate with what I am familiar with:

Sumner said [Stephen] Douglas (who was present in the chamber) was a "noisome, squat, and nameless animal ... not a proper model for an American senator." He also portrayed [Andrew of SC] Butler as having taken "a mistress who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean, the harlot, Slavery." Not content to leave his assault on a political level, Sumner's three-hour oration took a cruel, personal turn as he mocked the 59-year-old Butler's manner of speech and physical mannerisms, both of which were impaired by a stroke that Butler had suffered earlier.

So this wasn't the classiest of guys. He was offensive for a good cause and I have no love lost for anyone he attacked, but this is not the hallmark of a great legislator. To his everlasting credit, no one did more for African-Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction and his spirit led to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the last major piece of legislation to help African-Americans for 80 years. That said act was not enforced and overturned by a Republican dominated Supreme Court in 1883 is no fault of his.

So Sumner deserves credit for much of what he did. But I think being a first-rate senator also means having some ability to function as a senator--to pass legislation, to craft compromise, to show legislative leadership. And Sumner didn't really have any of these qualities.

Confederate Monument in Seattle

I just found out that there is a monument to the Confederacy in Seattle. Apparently, it has a history of being vandalized. I knew I liked Seattle for a reason.

Alterdestiny Homework

OK, you slackers, time to start working for the semester!

On Monday, I am going to talk about some of the film I am showing as part of my US Civil War in History and Memory course. Film is a key way to get at ideas of memory. One of the bits I am showing the students is the South Park episode, "The Red Badge of Gayness," about Civil War reenactments. It's from season 3 and you can watch it here.

Watch it so we can have a good discussion of the value and challenges of teaching this kind of material to students.

Historical Image of the Day

Dred Scott

Historical Image of the Day

Engraving of Battle of Vicksburg, 1863

Historical Image of the Day

Romanticized portrayal of the last meeting of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I couldn't find the date

Historical Image of the Day

"A Veteran On Furlough," Harper's, 1864

Historical Image of the Day

Drawing depicting first Battle of Manassas, 1861

Tuesday Forgotten American Blogging: Louis Hughes

In 1865, Louis Hughes was a 32 year old slave. Like many slaves, his father was white and his mother was black. He was born near Charlottesville, Virginia in 1832. When he was 11, his master separated him from his mother. He never saw his mother again after 1844. He was sold to a man in Richmond who later sold him to another slaveholder in Mississippi. While there, he was abused by the master's wife. However, in 1850, he was sent north to a new estate near Memphis that his owner had recently purchased. He was living here when the Civil War began in 1861. He was married to a woman named Matilda, also owned by the same master. Like many slaveholders, Hughes' master sent him back downriver when the Union armies came.

Despite what neo-Confederates would have you believe, nearly all slaves yearned to escape. Louis Hughes was among them. Louis repeatedly took off during the war, but had bad luck, running into Confederate troops in one case. In 1864, in part to keep him from escaping, Hughes' owner sent him to work in the Confederate salt works in Alabama. At the beginning of 1865, this is where both Louis and Matilda lived and worked.

Louis was an excellent businessman and made a nice living for himself selling things to other slaves. Whites realized this at the salt works and made deals with him that helped everyone out, particularly as goods became scarce once the South was clearly losing the war. But like everyone else, he wanted out as soon as possible. In March 1865, Union forces moved to attack Mobile and all the slaves at the salt works were to be sent back to their owners. He worked in the fields for awhile back on his owner's plantation in Mississippi. But the Union armies never really came to Panola County, Mississippi. Much of the Confederate's plantation homeland never faced the realities of the war, at least until Sherman's march through Georgia and South Carolina. When the war ended, in April 1865, Hughes' owner ordered that no blacks could leave the plantation and they were to continue work as if nothing happened. By June, his master ordered that no blacks from outside the plantation could come onto his land without permission and it was clear that he was trying to close off his blacks to the outside world in order to continue appropriating their labor. At this point, Louis and another slave made their move, escaping the plantation at night and fleeing northward to Memphis. There they organized a rescue mission for the other slaves. They notified Captain Thomas A. Walker of the situation at the plantation. He could do nothing for them as he was overwhelmed with similar stories of recalcitrant planters refusing to free their slaves. On the way back though they ran into a couple of Union soldiers who were sympathetic to their plight. For the cost of two bottles of whiskey, the soldiers set them up with some soldiers who would help Louis and his friend out. Although the soldiers only numbered 2, they managed to bluff their way through the situation and fifteen slaves immediately left the plantation.

While Louis and Matilda at first were going to settle in Memphis, they soon chose to move north, and headed to Cincinnati later that summer. They continued north from there. Hughes arrived in Windsor, Ontario in December 1865, finding work as a hotel porter. He was disappointed that Canada did not provide him the opportunities he had hoped for. He spent the next few years working at jobs in northern cities, settling in Milwaukee in 1867. Louis and Matilda started a successful laundry business there. Louis became a founding member of St. Mark's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Milwaukee.

Louis also managed to find his long lost brother. With families split up all the time and spread across the South, most people never found their kin after emancipation. When they did, it was because of luck. One day, while working in Milwaukee, someone came up to Hughes and asked him if he had a brother because there was someone who looked just like him in Cleveland. Louis had accidentally chopped off one of his brother's fingers while playing as children and with this certain identifier, it was soon established that Billy was Louis' brother and they were reunited. Remarkable.

In the 1870s, Louis found himself in the nursing profession, which he proved quite skilled at. He travelled with patients as far away as Florida and California and became a member of the small, but growing, black middle class. In 1897, Louis Hughes published a memoir about his life as a slave, likely with help from one of his well-educated patients.

Louis remained bitter about slavery his entire life. In the memoir, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, he wrote about "the scars which I still bear upon my person, and...the wounds of spirit which will never wholly heal." He also attacked the Lost Cause myth, just becoming mainstream at that time, reminding his readers that if the Confederacy had won, he would still be a slave.

Matilda Hughes died in 1907. Louis lived until 1913, when he died in Milwaukee at the age of 80.

All of this information is taken from Stephen V. Ash's excellent, A Year in the South: Four Lives in 1865, which I highly recommend for anyone teaching the first half of the U.S. survey. Ash takes us on a journey through the eyes of 4 Southerners as they try to make it through the difficult year of 1865. Really first rate stuff.

Historical Image of the Day

Confederate memorial. Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1936

Historical Image of the Day

Clara Barton

Historical Image of the Day

Four African-American men digging graves, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Historical Image of the Day

Edward Francis Jemison, 2nd Louisiana Regiment, C.S.A.

Link of the Day: Old Hickory's Weblog

Along with us and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, no one has done more to attack the Confederate myth during Treason in Defense of Slavery month than Old Hickory's Weblog.

Now in his fourth year of attacking the Confederacy during the month of April, Bruce Miller, the writer, has taken the wise strategy of focusing on different issues each day.

Among his best posts so far:

April 9, the myth of the "War Between the States"
April 5, "The Lost Cause as a Living Ideology"
April 2, On Christianity and Slavery

But really, just read them all.

And also check out an explicitly anti-neo-Confederate blog Bruce points us to, well, Anti-Neo-Confederate

Historical Image of the Day

5 Generations of African-Americans at Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina

Tuesday Forgotten American Blogging: George Henry Thomas

Despite what neo-Confederates say about Southerners standing up for their region, not all Southerners committed treason in defense of slavery.

Take the example of George Henry Thomas. As Ernest B. Furguson argues in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine, Thomas has been unjustly forgotten by history because he was a Southerner who fought for the Union.

It's not as if Thomas had no connection to slavery. In fact, when he was fifteen he was nearly killed during the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion in Virginia. The most violent slave insurrection in the history of the United States, Turner's forces killed 55 whites before facing slaughter from local militias. His family owned slaves and broke the law in order to teach some of them to read.

When he turned 20, like many Southern gentlemen, Thomas entered West Point. Thomas' early military career consisted of subduing the Seminoles in Florida and then heading west to fight in the Mexican War. He served well, rising in rank throughout the conflict. In 1851, he became artillery instructor at West Point. Although he spent as much time as possible at home in Virginia, he never forgot that he served the United States government. In 1860, when Virginia was moving toward secession, Governor John Letcher offered Thomas a high level post. Thomas replied, "It is not my wish to leave the service of the United States as long as it is honorable for me to remain in it, and therefore as long as my native State Virginia remains in the Union it is my purpose to remain in the Army, unless required to perform duties alike repulsive to honor and humanity."

Thomas did not believe that ending slavery was a duty repulsive to honor and humanity. In fact, Thomas became an important military strategist for the Union, fighting at major battles throughout the conflict and rising in rank as well. He helped hold Chattanooga for the Union in 1863, was given command of the Army of the Cumberland, and survived a siege in that city. Thomas gladly accepted black soldiers into his armies and believed that the Army was a good transition from slavery to freedom for them.

Thomas never reached the highest ranks of the military, in part because, as a Southerner, he lacked the patronage in high positions that people like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman enjoyed. By late 1864, Thomas was back in Tennessee, fighting Confederate forces threatening to retake Nashville. Grant, who evidently never much cared for Thomas, wanted to fire him because he had not engaged the Confederates. But while the message was on the way to get rid of him, Thomas attacked on December 15 and crushed the Confederates under General Hood. This fight was a complete annihilation of Hood's forces, which military historians have argued was the only time this happened during the war.

After the war, Thomas was generous to his vanquished Southern brothers but also vociferously opposed the Ku Klux Klan. He also declined when Andrew Johnson wanted to promote Thomas to full general, correctly seeing that this was a political move intended to stop Grant from become president. He didn't live long anyway, suffering a stroke in 1870 and dying at the age of 53.

What's really important here is that Thomas, like Winfield Scott and other Southerners, did not commit treason. Many Southerners made the right choice and fought for the Union. Don't let the neo-Confederates tell you otherwise. Robert E. Lee and others faced a tough decision and they made the wrong choice. They decided to secede in defense of slavery rather than fight for the nation which they had taken an oath.

There is a 1986 biography of Thomas which I have not read, entitled, Rock of Chickamauga: The Life of General George H. Thomas, by Freeman Cleves. Other than that, I know of no other publications on Thomas except for this article from which this information is derived. Frankly, I had never heard of the man until Rob sent this article to me, for which I thank him.