Saturday, April 17, 2010

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2010, April 17: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's neo-Confederacy

Haley Barbour, Republican Governor of Mississippi and chairman of the national Republican Governor's Association, stepped up to the plate to defend his own proclamations of Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi (not Confederate History Month as in Virginia):Barbour Criticized for Slavery Insensitivity by Ward Schaefer Jackson Free Press 04/13/10.

Here's ole Haley's interview with CNN's Candy Crowley that is the topic of Schaefer's article.



Barbour actually manages to make an important point in the process of trying to make the whole issue of singling out the Confederacy for special honor and recognition sound just routine. Mississippi Democrats in the legislature and previous Mississippi Democratic Governors have also proclaimed Confederate "heritage" observances. While neo-Confederacy is a speciality of the Republican Party these days, Democratic politicians will sometimes pander to neo-Confederates, as well. Edward Sebesta did a run-down on the 2008 Presidential candidates and neo-Confederacy: Presidential Candidates' Confederate Records.

Probably the most embarrassing Democratic example there was Joe Biden. Poor Joe. He's got a sort of classic glad-hand style which I usually find more endearing than otherwise. But it also sometimes leads him to say dumb things, like in this interview with Chris Wallace quoted at Ed's site:

WALLACE: And, finally, Senator Biden — finally, we've got about 30 seconds left, but I can't let you go without some politics. As we've mentioned, you're in South Carolina right now, on the campaign trial. Thirty seconds or less, what kind of a chance would a Northeastern liberal like Joe Biden stand in the South if you were running in Democratic primaries against southerners like Mark Warner and John Edwards.

BIDEN: Better than anybody else. You don't know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from [i.e., but] a Northeast liberal state.
But back to Haley Barbour. Ward Schaefer writes:

Marty Wisemann, director of Mississippi State University's Stennis Institute of Government, said that Barbour's comments may have played well to a staunchly Republican base in the South but were likely to hurt his stature nationally.

"I think he might have underestimated the fact that that wound had already been reopened," Wisemann said. "When you take that southern accent, and you add this comment to it, it might be a heavy load to get out from under."

Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson said that the very idea of honoring the state's Confederate history was grossly mistaken.

"Any time you commemorate an event or an incident such as the Confederacy, whose premise was built on enslaving other human beings, it becomes a very big deal," Johnson said. "That's like saying that we should commemorate the birth of Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party. All those things were atrocities against human beings that we should not repeat. We should learn from them, so we don't repeat (them), but we should not celebrate."

On April 26, State offices will be closed to honor Confederate Memorial Day. [my emphasis]
This Hitler-Nazi reference at the end isn't as egregious as Roland Martin's blundering comments that I discussed in yesterday's post. But it's a confusing message, these days. With Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and their many imitators spending the last year-plus saying that Obama is like Hitler and the Nazis, lots of people who hear that comparison would think it means that the Confederacy provided everyone access to buy health insurance.

The analogy is so overused, it's almost become banal. And it shouldn't be banal. And, in practice, I doubt that Derrick Johnson would mistake the difference between someone displaying a Confederate flag and someone displaying a Nazi flag.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to push the difference. If you see a Confederate battle flag in Germany, it's normally a substitute for a Nazi flag, which is illegal to display there. I remember seeing one on the door of an office in Majorca, a Spanish island that is a famous tourist destination for Germans. I knew immediately that it was some far-right group for them to be displaying the Confederate flag. Not a "heritage" I want anyone to identify me with.

I will say, though, that it would not be unreasonable comparison to observe that the Nazi's treatment of Jews and other minorities Germany up until the annexation of Austria in 1938 didn't approach the level of brutality of the slavery of African-Americans in the antebellum US. Jews could emigrate from Germany, though they had to forfeit basically all their property and money to do so. Slaves didn't have the option to leave, and they were property.

Tags: , ,

Friday, April 16, 2010

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2010, April 16: Neo-Confederacy and the mass media


Confederate guerilla fighter William Quantrill (1837-1865)

This year, I could almost do a whole month's worth of posts just piggy-backing off Kevin Levin's excellent blog Civil War Memory.

In this post, Kevin looks at the way cable TV has tried to handle the Viginia controversy over "Confederate History Month": Mainstream Media Tackles Confederate History Month = Fail Civil War Memory 04/12/10. Kevin writes of the Establishment media coverage of the neo-Confederate controversy touched off by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's proclamation of Confederate History Month:

I ended up watching more of the “debate” on the major news channels than I care to admit. It was downright painful to watch. The most disappointing aspect of it all was the almost complete absence of any professional historians. You would think that the major networks could have mustered up at least one legitimate historian. The closest I saw was a half-way decent interview that Rachel Maddow conducted with Patricia Harris-Lacewell, who teaches politics and African American Studies at Princeton. Unfortunately, the professor’s distinction between two southern pasts didn’t quite address all of the salient issues involved.

More often than not the audience was treated to the same talking heads who clearly do not understand the relevant history. CNN’s Roland Martin had a field day with this issue, which included a lively debate with Brag Bowling. No surprise that Bowling was at times inarticulate, but Martin’s comparison of Confederate soldiers with Nazis and suggestion that they were “domestic terrorists” shut the door on any chance of rational debate. You can read Martin’s recent essay comparing Confederates with terrorists on the CNN site. It is one of the most incoherent arguments that I’ve seen in a long time; I would love for someone to explain it to me. Finally, check out Martin in this little clip with Republican adviser Mary Matalin, who retreats to the old saw that most white southerners were not slaveowners and that most northerners were not abolitionists. [my emphasis]
Apparently this is the essay of Martin's to which Kevin is referring: Confederates, Al-Qaida are the Same: Terrorists Roland S. Martin Blog 04/09/10. His argument certainly is frivolous. He's using "terrorist" as a vague synonym for "bad" and his whole argument is puffery.

Terrorism in wartime is one tactic that armies use. "Terror" in the political sense in the first two-thirds of the 19th was understood more as state repression, as in the Terror during the French Revolution. Guerrilla warfare was certainly used; the word "guerilla" first became attached to such warfare during the Spanish War of Indepedence of 1808-14 against Napoleonic France. They employed small-unit ambushes, assassinations, destruction of property and retaliation against collaborators as tactics. And the Confederacy did make limited use of guerrilla warfare, most famously (or rather infamously) with Quantrill's Raiders, of which the young Jesse James was one.

This Harper's Weekly article of 08/27/1862 (see also the illustration; scroll down on both pages; illustration included below) describes one of Quantrell's raids as follows:

About one o'clock Sunday morning, the 7th inst., Quantrell, with two hundred and thirty men, dashed into and took possession of Olathe, the county seat of Johnson County, Kansas. From that time until he left, at an early hour in the morning, he and his men were engaged in the work of murder, plunder, and devastation.

Mr. Skinner and Mr. Wiggins, both recruits, were killed for making resistance. Mr. Blanchard, of Spring Hill, was also killed. They took fifty horses and mules, attached them to the best wagons they could find, and loaded them with goods seized from the stores. Private houses were entered, furniture broken, blankets stolen, and doors and windows beaten down. A Union flag suspended over the recruiting-office of Captain Hayes was torn to shreds and trampled in the dust by these mad assailants.

Quantrell said when he left that he was going to Paola, and that he should not rest until he had laid the border in ruin.


But Martin's silly article is not about the small guerrilla aspect of the Confederate war effort. It's just a polemic generalization that, as Kevin rightly says, "shut the door on any chance of rational debate". Or even historically literate discussion.

Here's video of Martin's on-air version:



Tags: , ,

The tactic of assassinating terrorist group leaders

Jenna Jordan has done a study of the effectiveness of assassinating the heads of terrorist groups in stopping the group's terrorism: When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation Security Studies 18/2009 that's just come to my attention from different sources, including:

No Martyr Left Behind Wilson Quarterly 04/11/10

Juan Cole, Wright: Assassinations Strengthen Religious Terrorist Groups 04/15/10.

Robert Wright, The Price of Assassination New York Times 04/13/10

Her conclusions may seem counterintuitive. But I'm not surprised by them. Depending on the size of the terrorist group, killing the leader may not end their activities and can even make them more radical and violent. Many of the drone strikes that have caused such anger in Pakistan and Afghanistan and other places are deployed based on the decapitation approach to counterterrorism.

From Jenna Jordan's synopsis, with paragraph breaks inserted:

Leadership targeting has become a key feature of current counterterrorism policies. ... However, leadership decapitation is not always successful, and existing empirical work is insufficient to account for this variability. ...

I develop a dataset of 298 incidents of leadership targeting from 1945–2004 in order to determine whether and when decapitation is effective. First, I identify the conditions under which decapitation has been successful in bringing about organizational decline. The data show that a group’s age, size, and type are critical in identifying when decapitation will cause the cessation of terrorist activity. As an organization grows in size and age, it is much more likely to withstand the removal of its leadership. Organizational type is also significant in understanding the susceptibility of an organization to decapitation. Ideological organizations are most likely to experience a cessation of activity following the removal of leader, while religious organizations are highly resistant to leadership decapitation.

Second, I determine whether decapitation is an effective counterterrorism strategy that results in organizational collapse. The data show that decapitation does not increase the likelihood of organizational collapse beyond a baseline rate of collapse for groups over time. Organizations that have not had their leaders removed are more likely to fall apart than those that have undergone a loss of leadership. The marginal utility of decapitation is negative for many groups, particularly for larger, older, religious, and separatist organizations.

Finally, I look at the extent to which decapitation results in organizational degradation and hinders a group’s ability to carry about terrorist attacks. Case studies illustrate whether decapitation has an effect on the operational capacity of an organization by identifying whether the removal of key leaders changes the number and lethality of attacks. If certain organizations are more resilient than others, it is important to know when decapitation should be effective and when it could lead to counterproductive outcomes. Overall, these findings illustrate the need to develop a new model for evaluating the efficacy of leadership decapitation and for developing effective counterterrorism policies. [my emphasis]
In the body of her paper, she writes:

Optimism toward the success of decapitation is based primarily on theories of charismatic leadership. The concept of charisma has been pivotal in developing decapitation as a dominant counterterrorism strategy. Organizations headed by charismatic leaders, whose skills are viewed as essential to the operational success of the group, are seen as more volatile than other types of organizations. Social network analysis, which is rooted in sociological studies of organizational dynamics, would predict more variability in the success of decapitation. According to social network analysis, social ties between actors are the primary means by which to understand the functioning of an organization. Actors with the most social ties are crucial to organizational planning, and their removal can weaken an organization. If organizations have networks that are susceptible to the removal of central actors, decapitation should be effective. These two theoretical perspectives have both been used to bolster claims regarding the effectiveness of decapitation. [my emphasis]
And she writes:

Ultimately, these findings indicate that our current counterterrorism strategies need rethinking. The data show that independent of other measures, going after the leaders of older, larger, and religious groups is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive. Moreover, the decentralized nature of many current terrorist organizations has proven to be highly resistant to decapitation and to other counterterrorism measures. ...

Overall, this study shows that we need to rethink current counterterrorism policies. Decapitation is not ineffective merely against religious, old, or large groups, it is actually counterproductive for many of the terrorist groups currently being targeted. In many cases, targeting a group’s leadership actually lowers its rate of decline. Compared to a baseline rate of decline for certain terrorist groups, the marginal value of decapitation is negative. Moreover, going after the leader may strengthen a group’s resolve, result in retaliatory attacks, increase public sympathy for the organization, or produce more lethal attacks. Based on these findings, it seems imperative that policy makers consider not only the overall effectiveness of decapitation as a counterterrorism measure but also the potential for adverse consequences.

Left/right alliance with the Tea Party?


Unlikely in the extreme.

But it's an idea that some people are kicking around. Noam Chomsky seems to have something like that in mind in what's quoted from him in Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America by Matthew Rothschild The Progressive 04/12/10:

“The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime,” he said.

He cited a statistic from a recent poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.

“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error,” Chomsky said.

Their attitudes “are understandable,” he said. “For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined. This is in large part the consequence of the decision in the 1970s to financialize the economy.”

There is class resentment, he noted. “The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels,” he said.

And Obama is linked to the bankers, Chomsky explained.

“The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain,” he said. “They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are “fine guys” and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’

People see that and are not happy about it.”
The reason I'm generally unimpressed with Chomsky's political analysis is that he's always playing verbal tricks like this. It's one thing to make a sociological analysis that unemployment, job uncertainty and other social insecurity, and anger at the wealthy create a volatile political climate with various potentials.

But the Tea Party movement is not the diverse movement of political newcomers that it's participants like to picture themselves as being. It's heavily funded and promoted by official and unofficial Republican Party funding, organization and publicity. See, for instance, GOP operatives crash the tea party by Kenneth Vogel Politico 04/14/10.

Joan Walsh (The Tea Partiers' racial paranoia Salon 04/15/10) and Digby (Teabag Nation Hullabaloo 04/14/10) have recently posted about the politics of the Tea Party movement with reference to the polling data described in Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated by Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan New York Times 04/14/10. Joan also references this analysis, The Tea Partiers: Older, richer and more resentful Salon by David Jarman 04/15/10. Digby puts it this way:

There's nothing particularly surprising about the rest of them either. These people are nothing new. They have different iterations, but when you get right down to it they are, quite simply, the far right. They hate poor people (especially blacks) and they hate government that helps poor people (especially blacks.) They are deluded about taxes and spending and are paranoid about the government being infiltrated by "the other." They believe they are the only "true" Americans and alternate between insisting that their "traditional values" are best represented by the Bible or the Constitution, both of which they believe they are ordained by God to properly interpret. And they do not really believe in democracy which is really why they hate the government.

When they lose they stage a national hissy fit of epic proportions and persuade the [Beltway] Village (where they are perceived as the personification of the heartland of America) that they are something very important. Now that they have their very own TV and radio networks featuring crazed right wing demagogues 24/7, they are more successful on those terms than ever. But they are nothing new, nothing new at all. They are mostly a bunch of cranky, white men with money who are trying desperately to hang on to their privileges. Same as it ever was.

They are what we have called "Republicans" for at least the last 30 years. [my emphasis]
As I've said before, the United States currently has a two-party democratic system in which one of the two parties, the Republicans, have become an authoritarian party. And, we have to now add, one in which the Democratic President is continuing to claim Executive powers of the kind which led to some of the worst authoritarian abuses under the Cheney-Bush administration.

Joan accurately describes the basic nature of the Republican-front Tea Party movement:

I've written before that I find it galling when the wealthy, white Pat Buchanan (who by the way spent much of his adult life on government health insurance) lectures me about being "condescending" to the Tea Partiers, as though they're a grass-roots uprising of the vulnerable against the elites. That's garbage: They are a well-funded uprising of the elites against the vulnerable. And they'd be nowhere if their mission wasn't largely supported by the top of corporate America (and the GOP shadow government in waiting). [my emphasis]
In other words, the facts we know about the Tea Party from their own spokespeople, newspaper coverage, polling information, interviews with Tea Party activists and so on, just don't support the notion promoted by Chomsky and a few other left-leaning optimists that the Tea Party is somehow a movement that can be directly co-opted by the Democrats, much less by leftwing activist groups.

Tags: , ,

Thursday, April 15, 2010

More on the Hutaree Christian terrorist "militia"


Dave Neiwert provides an audio of David Bryan Stone Sr., the leader of the Hutaree Militia of aspiring Christian terrorists, rousing his followers in The Hutaree militia: At the crossroads of Christianity and terrorist violence Crooks and Liars 04/12/10. Dave writes:

The striking aspect of the audio is the way Stone's rhetoric is essentially a logical outcome of basic Patriot-movement rhetoric about the "new world order" and "sovereignty" -- rhetoric that is nowadays gaining wide currency at Tea Party rallies and on their websites. Indeed, as we've been reporting for some time, the Tea Parties are fundamentally a revival of the '90s Patriot movement, this time with the blessing of official conservative-dom.
This is why it's so silly for people like Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby to be blathering on about how liberals shouldn't be criticizing these nice white folks in the Tea Party movement for what they actually say and do. Especially Somberby's favorite Tea Party crush Pam Stout.

The mainstream media continues its reluctance to describe far-right terrorist groups as terrorists. But I have come across a weird exception to that rule in the conservative Christian Post (which I suppose doesn't count as "mainstream" media) in Group Takes Offense at 'Christian Warrior' Media Coverage by Ethan Cole 03/30/10:

Mainstream media outlets are bias in their reporting about the nine self-identified “Christian warriors” accused of plotting to kill law enforcement officers, contends a group whose mission is to respond to anti-Christian defamation.

Even though members of the militia group call themselves Hutaree, which they say means “Christian warrior,” their alleged violent plan “is absolutely contrary to Christianity,” said Dr. Gary Cass, president of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

“They may have illicitly co-opted the Christian faith to justify their murderous intentions, but it is defamatory for the media to keep referring to them as Christians,” said Cass. “They are simply terrorists.”
Cass is pretty much turning the reality of our press corps upside down here:

He said it is “hypocritical” of mainstream news organizations to resist calling someone who carries out Jihad because of his faith an “Islamic terrorist” for fear of offending Muslims.

"But when some insane person claims to be a Christian and does something completely contrary to the Christian faith, the media keeps making the libelous association," Cass argued. "It's time for the news media to stop this transparent double standard."
The fundamentalist preacher R.C. Sproul in Perils Facing the Evangelical Church Ligonier Ministries Blog n.d. (accessed 04/13/10) gives an example of the kind of argument that fundamentalist Christians (and not just fundamentalists!) use to disown not only Christian churches with whom they sharply disagree but also distance themselves from any sense of responsibility for Christian religious terrorist groups:

When we consider the predicament that the evangelical church of the twenty-first century faces in America, the first thing we need to understand is the very designation "evangelical church" is itself a redundancy. If a church is not evangelical, it is not an authentic church. The redundancy is similar to the language that we hear by which people are described as “born-again Christians.” If a person is born again of the Spirit of God, that person is, to be sure, a Christian. If a person is not regenerated by the Holy Spirit, he may profess to be a Christian, but he is not an authentic Christian. There are many groups that claim to be churches that long ago repudiated the evangel, that is, the gospel. Without the gospel, a gathering of people, though they claim otherwise, cannot be an authentic church. [my emphasis]
A number of other good articles recently have addressed the Hutaree Militia and the general context of domestic Christian terrorist groups, including:

Sarah Posner, Will Ralph Reed’s New Venture Wed Religious Right to Tea Partiers? Religion Dispatches 04/13/10

'Tea' is for terrorism David Bernstein Boston Phoenix 04/12/10

Mark Juergensmeyer, The Return of Christian Terrorism Religion Dispatches 04/08/10

Frederick Clarkson, The Faith-Based Militia: When is Terrorism 'Christian'? Religion Dispatches 04/08/10

Chip Berlet, ‘Christian Warriors’: Who Are The Hutaree Militia And Where Did They Come From?
Religion Dispatches 03/31/10

Mark Juergensmeyer, Onward Christian Terrorists; Fighting Evil in the Obama Era Religion Dispatches 06/11/09

Tags: , ,

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2010, April 15:


Georgia Congressman Preston Brooks displays his version of Southern honor by sneaking up to antislavery Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner sitting at his Senate desk and clubbing him senseless

Every year when I do these April posts on neo-Confederacy and related issues, I worry that I won't be able to find material for it. And every year I wind up not getting to things that I had planned to cover.

Finding things to use is even less of a problem this year, thanks to Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia casting new attention on "Confederate heritage" and how problematic is is. This is one of many articles assessing the current issues: Carl M. Cannon Why Liberals Are Right to Refuse to Honor the Confederacy Politics Daily 04/12/10. Cannon's assesses the outcome of MCDonnell's Confederate flap well:

McDonnell's six-paragraph proclamation declared April to be "Confederate History Month." The governor appears to have seen the offending document as innocuous, and much of it was, but it was underpinned by a sentiment that does not reflect a universal view among Virginians; namely, that it is important to pay homage to "the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War." The proclamation also had had an important omission, these critics asserted, namely any reference to slavery.

In the outcry that followed, including personal protests from some high-profile African American Democrats from Virginia who had bolstered McDonnell's 2009 Republican candidacy, McDonnell quickly made amends. A new paragraph was inserted into the document:

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history ...

This is a pretty thorough mea culpa, and as direct a refutation of Southern revisionism as anyone could ask for, so continued criticism of McDonnell from liberal Democrats can understandably be viewed as partisan posturing. But political jockeying notwithstanding, liberals are indeed right to confront this issue forcefully, whenever it arises. [my emphasis in bold]
I wouldn't say that Democrats shouldn't criticize McDonnell's decision to proclaim Confederate History Month in the first place. But given his initial blunder, I've had the same praise for his amendment to his proclamation. It does directly refuse the historical lie that is at the core of neo-Confederate "Southern revisionism".

I don't assume in non-blog publications that the authors are responsible for the titles put on their articles. But it shouldn't be only liberals who are right to criticize McDonnell's proclamation of a Confederate History Month. But given the extent to which today's Republican Party has embraced neo-Confederate ideology, the headline is understandable. Why would anyone assume today's conservatives in America would criticize a glorification of the Confederacy?

Cannon goes on to give a useful discussion of the historical issue of slavery bringing on the Civil War:

Jefferson Davis, in a speech to the Confederate Congress in April 1861, extolled slavery as a benevolent invention that allowed a "superior race" to transform "brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers." Alexander H. Stephens, Jefferson Davis' vice president, proclaimed that Jefferson and the Founders' high-minded declarations of universal liberty were "in violation of the laws of nature." This was profoundly wrong, Stephens said.

"Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite idea," thundered the vice president of the Confederacy. "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."

This was the kind of thing said by a group of now-forgotten men called "secession commissioners." They were dispatched in 1860 from South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama to other state capitals in the South urging state legislatures to prepare for secession. These men outlined a bloody apocalyptic scenario of black rebellion and the attendant slaughter of whites – with frequent allusions to mass rape and throat-slitting. They invariably mentioned Haiti as the relevant example, and stated flatly that this is what Lincoln wished on the South.

"The [Haitian] Negro ... arose with all the fury of the beast, and scenes were then enacted over a comparatively few planters, that the white fiends [of the North] would delight to see re-enacted now with us," Andrew Pickens Calhoun – son of John C. Calhoun – said in Columbia, S.C. ...

"Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the Negro as an ignorant, inferior barbarian race incapable of self-government, and not therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political or social equality," Mississippi secession commissioner William L. Harris told Georgia's Legislature. Lincoln, he said, was committed on a course "to overturn and strike down this great feature of our Union."
That is why the Confederacy existed, to preserve slavery and the white supremacist and racist doctrines used to justify and defend it. It was anything but an honorable cause.

Tags: , ,

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Maverick McCain and his mavericky denial of being a maverick


The world's most famous ex-maverick Maverick

Manu Raju and Jonathan Martin report for the Arizona Republic: The 'M' word: 'Maverick' topic agitates McCain 10/14/10. Our most famous Maverick, the maverick who the pundits love to gush over for his unshakable integrity and maverickness, doesn't like being called a maverick right now.

In fact, the Great Maverick is downright touchy about it, it seems:

John McCain — who built his political persona and his 2008 presidential campaign around the claim that he's a "maverick" — told Newsweek recently: "I never considered myself a maverick."

When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: "I've been called a thousand things. It's absolutely ridiculous."

He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he's always "done what's best for my state and the nation." Then he said it again, adding, "People can consider me whatever they want."

And then he darted into the Senate chamber without explaining himself further.
Shorter McCain: I'm not a maverick. Don't call me a maverick! I said don't call me no stinkin' maverick!!!

It's tough being a non-mavericky Maverick.

Tags:

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2010, April 14: Mississippi's Articles of Secession, 1861


Jefferson Davis, Mississippi's only President to date: President of the Confederate States of America

This is the official declaration that Mississippi, the second state to secede from the Union, put out to state its reasons for the action (1861). It was called A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. The emphases in bold are mine:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory. [Which excluded slavery from those territories]

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.
Tags: , ,

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Obama's nuclear developments

Obama has had several major news events on the nuclear front lately. He completed a Nuclear Posture Review: Nuclear Posture Review (or Nuclear Public Relations?) by Stephen M. Walt Foreign Policy 04/06/10; 'Obama's Nuclear Strategy Is a Small Revolution' Der Spiegel International 04/07/10. He held a nuclear summit in Washington, "the largest such gathering on U.S. soil since the San Francisco conference that launched the United Nations in 1945", according to John Aloysius Farrell in Nuclear security summit: a historic gathering Global Post 04/12/10. And he negotiated a new START Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear armaments: Arms Deal More 'Illusion than Reality,' But Still a Good START Der Spiegel International 04/09/10.

As the titles of the articles I linked may hint, I'm cautiously optimistic about these developments. In the grand scheme of things, nuclear arms control is still the most important responsibility of world leaders, even if the politics don't play out that way. If we can't avoid a big nuclear war, global warming won't have time to devastate the planet.

It's hard to imagine that any treaty Obama negotiated would be able to get through the Senate with the Republicans pursuing their policy of fundamental (just-say-no) opposition to the President and the Democrats. And we can no longer count on the Republicans to honor such agreements even though they were signed but not technically ratified, which is what the Reagan administration did with the SALT II Treaty. With the precedent now of the Cheney-Bush administration "unsigning" the International Criminal Court treaty and the Republicans firmly committed to a unilateralist foreign policy, we can't count on them acting rationally even about a major nuclear arms-control treaty that is very much in the national interest.

And speaking of the Reagan administration, I've always given Reagan credit for three significant, constructive accomplishments: the Social Security financing plan; his 1985 tax reform (not to be confused with the "supply side" tax cuts of 1981); and, his intermediate nuclear-arms treaty with the Soviet Union.

Joe Conason has a good column on the latter today as he refutes Sarah Palin's pseudohistory about Saint Reagan, What Sarah Palin forgets (or never knew) about Ronald Reagan Salon 04/12/10:

Beginning in November 1985, at a meeting in Geneva, Reagan and Gorbachev sought to slash nuclear weapons stockpiles in the U.S. and the Soviet Union by 50 percent or more. A year later they met in Reykjavik to discuss proposals to completely eliminate nuclear weapons from the arsenals of both nations. The U.S. president's approach was so radical -- and radically sincere, according to everyone close to him -- that it alarmed many of his more conservative advisors. His hawkish defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, was appalled. Relieved when the Reykjavik talks ended without agreement because of a fundamental disagreement over missile defenses, the hawks were disturbed, to put it mildly, when Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987.

The INF treaty was truly historic, both because of its own deep cuts in the superpower arsenals and because of its symbolic portent of the imminent end of the Cold War. No treaty between the U.S. and the USSR had been signed and ratified by the Senate for 15 years by then -- and this agreement stipulated the drawdown and destruction of nuclear weapons by both sides for the first time ever.

Morever, at a moment when conservative opinion widely distrusted Gorbachev and urged Reagan to maintain bitter antagaonism [sic] toward "our enemies," he employed summitry and arms negotiations to reassure the Soviets that they could pursue liberalization without fear. It was a decisive moment in world history and one for which the intuitive president deserves great credit. [my emphasis]
The Republicans with their postmodern "reality is what you want it to be" approach to history have transmogrified a theatrical moment of no practical significance - Reagan in Berlin saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - into a symbol of how bluster and belligerence "defeated" the Soviet Union. But Conason has it right. Stating it slightly differently, the most significant step Reagan took that encouraged the developments that lead to the end of the USSR was the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, not the useless "Star Wars" boondoggle or backing the fanatical Muslim terrorists brave mujaheddin freedom fighters in Afghanistan.

My understanding of Reagan's actions in the matter of the INF Treaty is in line with Conason's. Despite his dogmatic conservatism, the influence of his and Nancy Reagan's being active in peace groups in the years immediately following the Second World War remained with him. Nancy pushed him to achieve something that would be remembered as a substantial legacy for peace. And the INF Treaty qualified.

It's always tempting for liberals to look back to some period ten or twenty years ago and try to say, oh, look how much more sensible conservatives were back then. Conservatives play the same game. But when it comes to crackpot rightwing radicalism, Richard Hofstadter's famous essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", published in 1965 in book form, reinforced that particular tendency for liberals. And it's become kind of a bad habit. In most matters of domestic and foreign policy, Republicans are being realistic when they look to Reagan as having blazed a trail for them. Reagan's "Iran-Contra" foreign policy adventure became the template for the entire foreign policy of the Cheney-Bush administration.

But on the issue of nuclear arms control, Conason is right on the mark in contrasting the constructive nature of Reagan's nuclear arms policies in his second term with the unreflective militarism and reckless worship of nuclear arms that prevail in today's Republican Party.

Tags: ,

Confederate "Heritage" Month, April 13: Responding to a defense of Confederate "heritage" celebration


One of my Facebook friends, a white man from Mississippi, posted a long comment inspired by Jon Meachem's Southern Discomfort op-ed New York Times 04/10/10. He disputed Meachem's contention that Lost Cause/neo-Confederate ideology has historically been identified with white racism. The following is an expanded version of the response I left to his comment.

I don't think very highly of Jon Meachem's work as a pundit. But in that op-ed, he got the basic idea right, that in fact the Lost Cause narrative has been closely associated historically with the disenfranchisement of African-American voters and the Jim Crow/segregation system. This essay, Neo-Confederacy and the New Dixie Manifesto by Euan Hague, Edward Sebesta, and Heidi Beirich, the Introduction to their book Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (2008), shows how that has played out in recent years.

Anyone who is serious about promoting a Lost Cause version of history and not wanting it to be understood as some form of white-identity politics should be very realistic about how neo-Confederate ideology has actually been used in American politics since the end of the Civil War.

My Facebook friend wrote defensively that it looked to him like "the liberal intelligentsia and avant garde" were trying to "generate an 'intellectual' attack on 'neo-Confederates';" aka 'white, Christian, hood-wearing, cross-burning racists'--by none other than a 'fellow, albeit enlightened Southerner'." I think he got carried away with his quotation marks, because the version of Meachem's article on the Times' Web site as of this writing doesn't contain the phrase "white, Christian, hood-wearing, cross-burning racists."

The notion that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War became a part of the political position of conservative white Southerners about the time of Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Slavery had been totally discredited by the war, and conservative Southerners who had supported the Confederacy wanted to disenfranchise and otherwise restrict the freedom of freed slaves. The term "Lost Cause" is usually traced to the 1866 book The Lost Cause by Edward Pollard, who made the slavery-had-nothing-to-do-with-it argument. It was pseudohistory then and is now.

Of course, even in Pollard's account, he couldn't hide the fact that every major disagreement leading up to the Civil War had slavery at its core: the Mexican-American War, the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the mini-civil war in Kansas, the Lecompton Constitution, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, Lincoln's election.

States-rights was an issue in those disputes. The Fugitive Slave Act had the federal government requiring state officials and even private citizens to act as slavecatchers for escaped slaves, with severe penalties for refusing to do so. The Dred Scott decision was a federal decision that directly threatened the ability of free states to legislate against slavery in their own borders. Southern spokesmen demanded that the federal government suppress antislavery advocacy within free states. The slaveowners were always unambiguous in their support for using the federal government to override states rights when it came to defending what Southern orators called "our sacred institution of slavery".

After Lincoln's election, the slaveowners rediscovered the virtue of states rights when it came to preserving slavery, which took precedence with them about any other Constitutional theory and certainly over elementary American patriotism. All the agitation for secession stressed the central role of defending slavery. The most striking thing to me about the amendment Virginia's Gov. Bob McDonnell made to his original proclamation for Confederate History Month 2010 was that it states explicitly, "it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war."

It's true that not all Confederate soldiers were slaveowners. But soldiers on both sides knew very well that slavery was the cause of the war and the reason for the Confederate revolt, whatever their personal opinions may have been on the subject.

It's also not the case that non-slaveowning Southern whites had no direct prewar connection to enforcing slavery. Southern states had required non-slaveowning men to participate regularly in "slave patrols" to look for escaped slaves. They had unchallenged authority to stop and abuse any black person free or slave they saw out in public, whether or not the victim was authorized to be there. And they often did so. It was an effective way to create an emotional bond to the slave system even among nonslaveowners. Betram Wyatt-Brown has a good description of the slave patrols in his Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (1982) They were also a direct precursor to the post-war, Klan-type white terrorist groups who committed so much violence.

I suppose that it will always be difficult to separate history from politics, since a lot of history is, after all, politics of the past. If present-day conservatives want to continue making Lost Cause ideology one of their defining issues, that's really up to them.

Neo-Confederate advocacy groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy were promoting the notion that the Confederacy had nothing to do with slavery, even long before more overt white supremacists types took over the leadership of the SCV around 10 years ago.

I don't know exactly what the current state of that particular internal battle in the SCV is. But they are continuing to promote the same pseudohistory. You can easily see in most of their advocacy material that the idea of the Confederacy having nothing to do with slavery is primarily a way of sneering at black people, such as the latest hobby-horse, the false claim that many slaves fought voluntarily for the Confederacy. In fact, giving slaves guns and military training was the last thing the slaveowners wanted to do.

Tags: , ,

Monday, April 12, 2010

Racism, political violence and false equivalencies (6)

This is the last in a series of posts that I started a couple of weeks ago. Democrats are rightly starting to focus on the growing problem of far-right violence. Some of the analyses from our star pundits are done with the low level of thought and attention to fact and history that we've come to expect of them. But the problem is real, and is being fed by the Republican Party, both officially and unofficially. Rush Limbaugh has long been the Party's chief theoretician. And he, together with the de facto Party channel FOX News and prominent elected officials, are hyping real fanaticism with their accusations that Obama is setting up a Communist dictatorship by giving most people access to buy private health insurance.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars shares the video of Michele "Nostradamus" Bachmann with Chris Wallace: Crazier than ever, she still calls President Obama "anti-American" 04/11/10. Bachmann shays that "today the federal government effectively owns or controls 51% of the private economy", including health care which she counts as 18% of the 51%.

And that kind of Republican promotion of hysteria is unlikely to slack off any time soon. Bob McElvaine in Misdirected cause Jackson Clarion-Ledger 04/11/10 gives his perspective on the fear-mongering. Robert Perry provides an important analysis of the Republicans' political long game in A Method to Republican 'Madness' Consortium News 03/31/10.

But just because the Republicans and the far right are saying based on falsehoods that the country is going to hell in a wheelbarrow (my new favorite figure of speech!), that doesn't mean that there aren't deeply serious Constitutional problems that American citizens should be concerned about. Because there are.

Al Gore gave a remarkable speech to the Liberty Coalition on 01/16/10: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues Washington Post. After discussing admitted violations of law by the Cheney-Bush administration in their surveillance programs, he continues:

And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, as you know, the president has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that notwithstanding his American citizenship that person in prison has no right to talk with a lawyer, even if he wants to argue that the president or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The president claims that he can imprison that American citizen -- any American citizen he chooses -- indefinitely, for the rest of his life, without even an arrest warrant, without notifying them of what charges have been filed against them, without even informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

No such right exists in the America that you and I know and love. It is foreign to our Constitution.

It must be rejected.

At the same time, the executive branch has also claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture and have plainly constituted torture -- in a widespread pattern that has been extensively documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by executive branch interrogators. Many more have been broken and humiliated. And, in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were completely innocent of any criminal charges whatsoever.

This is a shameful exercise of power that overturns a set of principles that you're nation has observed since General George Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War.

They have been observed by every president since then until now.

They violate the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture and our own laws against torture.

The president has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals on the streets of foreign cities and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes and nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.
While the Obama administration has officially discontinued torture, and I assume that they have, they have not prosecuted the torture perpetrators from the previous administration. Nor are they prosecuting them for open violations of the law on the surveillance programs or malicious prosecutions or other crimes.

And the current administration has not only preserved many of the claims of Executive power such as indefinite detention with no legal charges that the Cheney-Bush administration used in committing those crimes. In significant ways, they have asserted expanded powers of government secrecy and counterterrorism actions.

Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton and Marcy Wheeler are among the prominent bloggers who have been following these issues on a continuing basis.

As Glenn Greenwald points out in The criminal NSA eavesdropping program Salon 04/01/10, three federal judges have now held that the Cheney-Bush administration broke laws that represent multiple felonies in their massive NSA eavesdropping project. While these don't constitute final judgments of the matters of law or individual culpability, it's a reminder that those who call the officials responsible for that program criminals aren't just indulging in hyperbole. There were laws prohibiting what they did, and those laws should be enforced.

You can claim this is on the level of believing that President Obama isn't an American citizen or that he's planning to send around federal agents to confiscating everyone hunting rifles or IRS storm troopers to force you to sign up for health insurance. But that's pure fantasy. The violation of laws in the domestic spying program is not.

And apart from specific laws violated, this massive domestic surveillance program invites - in fact, almost guarantees - serious abuse of government power.

Greenwald describes the judicial findings that laws were violated as follows:

Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker yesterday became the third federal judge -- out of three who have considered the question -- to find that Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program was illegal (the other two are District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor and 6th Circuit Appellate Judge Ronald Gilman who, on appeal from Judge Taylor's decision, in dissent reached the merits of that question [unlike the two judges in the majority who reversed the decision on technical "standing" grounds] and adopted Taylor's conclusion that the NSA program was illegal).

That means that all 3 federal judges to consider the question have concluded that Bush's NSA program violated the criminal law (FISA). That law provides that anyone who violates it has committed a felony and shall be subject to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense. The law really does say that. Just click on that link and you'll see. It's been obvious for more than four years that Bush, Cheney, NSA Director (and former CIA Director) Michael Hayden and many other Bush officials broke the law -- committed felonies -- in spying on Americans without warrants. Yet another federal judge has now found their conduct illegal. If we were a country that actually lived under The Rule of Law, this would be a huge story, one that would produce the same consequences for the lawbreakers as a bank robbery, embezzlement or major drug dealing. But since we're not such a country, it isn't and it doesn't.
These crimes are real. And when government officials can get away with breaking the law the way the perpetrators in this case have so far, it encourages - again, virtually guarantees - that other officials will judge that they can get away with breaking these laws, or other laws they find inconvenient, or to use the same excuses to break laws in this case (national security, the very scary Terrorists, etc.).

And while the connection may be more complicated, government officials clearly getting away with violating the law in this way does erode respect for law because it erodes the rule of law itself. Along with other instances like Rove's program of partisan prosecutions carried out by the Bush Justice Department, this does encourage ordinary citizens to think, "Only dumb people get caught, and I'm smart enough not to." The connection is more complicated and harder to measure. But it's real, and it would be foolish for anyone committed to the rule of law to ignore it.

Bill Fisher gives a vivid example of the abuses of power to which such claims inevitably lead in Feel Safer Now? by Bill Fisher LobeLog Foreign Policy 04/06/10.

The Tea Partiers may be making scary claims that are unhinged from reality. And people need to call them out on it when they do.

But we also have some deep-seated problems in Constitutional governance that are continuing under the Obama administration that need to be addressed.

Tags: ,

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2010, April 12: Jacksonian antislavery


The Underground Railroad

The two previous posts in this year's series discussed Democratic Sen. Thomas Morris (1776-1844) of Ohio, an early proponent of the anti-slavery position in the US Senate. Morris is an important figure from the more consistently democratic, pro-labor trend of Jacksonian Democracy that became antislavery.

John Neuenschwander in Senator Thomas Morris: Antagonist of the South, 1836-1839 Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 32/3 (Fall 1974) makes a telling comparison of the House slavery critics of the 1830s, John Quincy Adams and William Slade, and Morris.

Adams had been Andrew Jackson's chief opponent in the 1824 and 1828 Presidential elections. Despite winning fewer popular votes than Jackson, Adams won the Electoral College vote in 1824. Jackson's partisans regarded the result as stemming from a "corrupt bargain". The Jacksonians also viewed Adams as President as being the advocate of the very wealthy against the interests of the majority. And not without good reason.

After Adams was defeated in 1828, he ran for the House of Representatives and served as a Massachusetts Congressman from 1831 to 1848. While there, he engaged the slavery issue and greatly helped raise the profile of the antislavery movement. Whatever his shortcomings and faults as President, he is rightly regarded as having contributed to American democracy in a very positive way in his House service.

Jacksonians like Morris were only beginning at the time to actively oppose slavery, as were some of Adams' Whig colleagues. After the traumatic crisis that led to the Compromise of 1820 that expanded the reach of slavery in the territories, there had been a tacit agreement in Congress to avoid discussing measures such as the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia that would have disturbed the uneasy truce between the defenders of slavery and those who opposed its expansion and looked forward to its eventual end.

Adams, Morris and Slade led the way in changing that pattern in Congress in the 1830s. However, Neuenschwander observes of Adams:

Although Morris, Adams, and Slade were all working for the same ends in Congress, they differed substantially in their individual political and moral perspectives. John Quincy Adams seems to have stood the furthest from the abolitionists. While he no doubt considered slavery to be the greatest national evil, he was not willing to see it completely extirpated if the price was disunion. In hopes of furthering emancipation without endangering the nation, the former President advocated antislavery positions in Congress but refused to have any public association with abolitionist groups. Hated and feared by the South and respected from a distance by the antislavery element, John Quincy Adams almost seemed to be above partisanship. The Northern abolitionists wanted to have him as one of their own but like Sarah Grimke they always "... came away sick at heart of political morality." Even his steadfast Vermont ally, William Slade, was driven to exasperation by Adams' adamant refusal to vote for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. [my emphasis]
William Slade was more explicit than either Adams or Morris about his opposition to slavery, and couched it in more explicitly religious terms than did either of the other two. "After becoming an exponent of immediate emancipation in 1837 he moved on the next year to embrace the abolitionists' most controversial position - racial equality," writes Neuenschwander. This was farther than most Abolitionists were willing to go right up to the Civil War.

Morris never publicly embraced the notion of racial equality between blacks and whites. But he was more outspoken than either Adams or Slade about the Slave Power notion. And his fellow slavery opponent and Liberty Party member Salmon Chase said in 1845 after Morris' death late the previous year, as quoted by Neuenschwander:
He was far beyond the time he lived in. He first led me to see the character of the slave power... Few antislavery men of today, with all the light thrown on the subject saw this matter as clearly as did he.
An admirable legacy. And a thoroughly Jacksonian one.

Tags: , , , ,

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2010, April 11: Thomas Morris, Jacksonian Abolitionist


Slave auction

The previous post in this year's series discussed Democratic Sen. Thomas Morris (1776-1844) of Ohio, an early proponent of the anti-slavery position in the US Senate. John Neuenschwander provided an account of Morris' career in Senator Thomas Morris: Antagonist of the South, 1836-1839 Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 32/3 (Fall 1974). His account provides some important perspective on the more consistently democratic, pro-labor trend of Jacksonian Democracy that became antislavery.

Morris was elected to the Ohio state assembly in 1806, after building a career as a lawyer but also after serving time in debtor's prison in 1802, an experience which "made him a lifelong crusader against all such regressive legislation," writes Neuenschwander. He continued to serve in the legislature well into the 1820s, and published a reform-oriented weekly newspaper, the Benefactor and Georgetown Advocate. He supporter Andrew Jackson's campaign for the Presidency in 1824, then again in 1828, the one that resulted in Old Hickory entering the White House.

Morris was not just a passive or minor supporter. As Neuenschwander recounts, he played a major part in building the Jacksonian party in Ohio:

During the late 1820's Morris became one of the chief architects of the Jacksonian party and for a time was considered by some to be "the presiding genius of the Democratic Party in Ohio." Although few traces can be found of his political activities during this period, he was certainly one of Jackson's key supporters in Ohio. One of his most significant undertakings in 1828 was the assistance he provided Samuel Medary of Bethel in founding the strongly pro-Jackson Ohio Sun. Not only did Medary play an important role in Jackson's election but he soon became one of the President's most trusted Ohio lieutenants.
After supporting Jackson again in the 1832 election, the Ohio legislature chose Morris as one of the state's two Senators in Washington. Morris began his Senate service in 1833, continuing through 1839. Upon his election, the Muskingum Messenger of 12/24/1832 wrote:

Mr. Morris is the only Senator we have had for a long time who firmly held the pure democratic faith, of a strict construction of the United States Constitution, and open war against all peculiar privileges and monopolies.
He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Jackson administration in their fight against the Bank of the United States, which to Jacksonians represented the Money Power restricting the life and freedom of ordinary workers and farmers and limiting economic development. Morris also supported Jackson in the his successful stand against South Carolina's attempt to nullify federal law over tariffs, the nullification effort surreptitiously by Jackson's Vice President John Calhoun, who intended to use the crisis to establish the option of state nullification or secession in case of future federal antislavery enactments.

By 1835, Southern slaveowners were in a tizzy about Abolitionist literature being mailed to the South. The Jackson administration took the anti-libertarian position of backing the slaveowners and looked the other way as Southern postmasters illegally confiscated suspected Abolitionist material from the mails. But at the start of 1836, Morris made a routine motion to present an antislavery petition to the Senate, and Calhoun rose to object. This was the moment that Morris began to emerge as a Senate spokesperson for the antislavery cause. Neuenschwander writes:

The Senator from South Carolina had barely settled in his chair beside Morris, before the junior Senator from Ohio bolted up and answered the attack by affirming Congressional authority to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. "If you are to tell the people that they are only to petition on this or that subject, or in this or that manner," Morris warned, 'the right of petition is but a mockery. " After he had relinquished the floor, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and several other members registered their surprise at the position he had just taken. To them it seemed that the Senator from Ohio had broken the gentlemen's agreement to refrain from debate on the issue of slavery in order to avoid further inflammation of the public mind. Although Morris later disclaimed any such intention, in the months ahead the agitator's role was to be thrust upon him by default. At a time when Northern senators, almost to a man, were withholding their antislavery views to placate the South, he refused to accord the peculiar institution such preferential treatment. [my emphasis]
Calhoun had in late 1835 started pushing for legislation to ban Abolitionist literature from the mails, an effort which Morris opposed. It was at this time that Morris began talking about the Slave Power concept, which Neuenschwander calls "an early version of the slave power conspiracy thesis."

Ohio was a free state, but there were pro-slavery elements in Ohio and their attacks on Abolitionists became increasingly violent. But Morris became increasingly active and vocal in the antislavery cause. In 1837, he introduced a series of resolutions in the Senate, including one to end the domestic slave trade, which would have been a crippling blow to the slave system. One of his resolutions declared:

That this Government was founded and has been sustained by the force of public opinion, and that the free and full exercise of that opinion is absolutely necessary for its healthy action; and that any system which will not bear the test of public examination is at War with its fundamental principles; ... poisons the very foundation of public justice, and excites mobs and other unlawful assemblies to deeds of violence and blood. [my emphasis]
Southern Democrats were bringing more and more pressure on the Northern branch of the Democracy (as the Democratic Party was often called from the time of Jackson's Presidency to the Civil War) to support pro-slavery measures and candidates. His antislavery stance was at least partly responsible for the Ohio legislature not electing him to a second term for the Senate. His successor in the Senate was Benjamin Tappan. His brothers Arthur and Lewis were well-known Abolitionists, but Benjamin was willing to accommodate the Slave Power.

But Morris stuck to the antislavery cause, running as the Vice Presidential candidate of the antislavery Liberty Party in 1844.

Although Morris generally doesn't attract the attention in historical accounts that the House slavery critics of that period John Quincy Adams and William Slade do, Neuenschwander gives a good statement of the significance of Morris' stance against slavery in the Senate in the 1830s:

Morris, no less than his counterparts in the House, was responsible for pressing the Senate to consider what every politician feared was an issue that could have no victors. If he had not been in the Senate from 1836 to 1839 it is doubtful that any other man would have stepped forward to confront and provoke the likes of John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay. Moreover, he was an antislavery Democrat. This made him a more frightening dissenter simply because the national Democratic party rested on such strong Southern underpinnings. [my emphasis]
And, I would add, he was a leader in applying Jacksonian principles to the issue of slavery. For a man praised as one "who firmly held the pure democratic faith," it was the right direction to go.

Tags: , , ,