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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E, WINTER 2000
in particular was enclosed and closed off by its slave system.
To quote C. Vann Woodward: “The ironic thing about these
two great hyphenate minorities, Southern-Americans and Afro-
Americans, confronting each other on their native soil for three
and a half centuries, is the degree to which they have shaped
each other's destiny, determined each other's isolation, shared
and molded a common culture It is in fact impossible to imagine
the one without the other and quite futile to try!
Southern slave society grew from the same historical
conditions that produced the world's other slave regimes The
rise of a world market and the need for cheap labor encouraged
slavery, and only the advent of mechanical technology and
industrialism rendered it inefficient and ultimately incapable
of competing in the very market that created it. The South was
haunted by its guilt and fear of slavery. Enslaving blacks was
justified through claims that it was God's intent that whites were
superior to blacks, that slavery civilized blacks and elevated
them above their former status as jungle savages, and that in
essence vtfiites were carrying out God's law by making slaves
and Christians out of pagan blacks. In reality, southern planta
tions were battlefields where slaves fought masters for physical
and psychological survival, and although they were unlettered,
outnumbered and unarmed, black slaves struggled in as many
ways as they could to preserve their humanity against virtually
inhuman odds. Southern whites bitterly resisted acknowledging
the humanity of their black slaves (a contradiction of their claim
of God's edict to Christianize them). Underlying their pious justi
fications was a terror of the system they had fabricated. The
culture of the antebellum South was continually in dread of slave
insurrection, and any outbreak was savagely suppressed. In a
sense a reason for perpetuating slavery was the fear of reprisal
once it was abolished.
Most northern whites also considered themselves
superior to blacks and the desire to abolish slavery had more
to do wth its interference with paid labor than with human rights.
Even a majority of the northern abolitionists who had risked
imprisonment and their lives providing underground systems of
escape for runaway slaves felt as Abraham Lincoln that blacks
should dwell apart from whites.
Yet, ultimately, however intense the economic dialectics
regarding slavery, and perhaps because the climate of industri
alism allowed it, the most important reason for the abolition of
slavery was the moral one. The idea of the inherent value of
an individual outlasted slavery and was the chief source of its
undoing. There were many reasons for the division of the young
nation, South from North, but at its core was the inhumanity of
slavery. Frank Tannenbaum, in his book Slave & Citizen, wrote
that inherent in the history of slavery was an important contribut
ion to the theory of social change: Wherever the law accepted
the doctrine of the "moral personality" of the slave and made
possible the gradual achievement of freedom implicit in such a
doctrine, the slave system was abolished peacefully Where the
slave was denied recognition as a moral person and was there
fore considered incapable of freedom, the abolition of slavery
was accomplished by force, by violence and revolution.
We cannot separate our history from the long centuries
of slavery. Without black slaves from Africa much of the West
ern Hemisphere would not have been converted into an enclave
of European civilization. The fight for independence that charac
terized the American Revolution did not include liberty for slaves
and the oversight caused the Civil War eighty years later.
Emancipation only brought a semblance of physical
relief from slavery but its underlying racialism has not been
eradicated nearly a century and a half later. If the class system
of slavery is defined by color, then a post-slavery society
becomes a form of apartheid, which has been the result in
the United States since the Civil War, and which was starkly
dramatized in the violence unleashed against the Civil Rights
movement in the 1950s and 1960s. We begin the third millen
nium of our era still a divided nation, and as Lincoln said, though
he was not the first to say it, a house divided will not long stand.
Blacks as well as vtfiites wish for separation, but there is really
no other place to go. Just as whites are no longer Europeans,
American blacks are not Africans anymore. For better or worse,
blacks and whites are hybrid-Americans
Slaves or free, the arduous, tragic and unequal role of
black Americans in building and defending the nation has always
been devalued and generally ignored. Just as the word history
seems to imply only male endeavor (his story), so does it also
imply Westem/European/white dominance and supremacy over
world affairs. Yet the black struggle for civic and social equality,
especially in the last generation, has been the most inspiring
“Roman slaves were granted not only freedom but
much prized Roman citizenship
**Or for Native Americans, whom Jackson exiled to the
far West and forced onto the 'Trail of Tears "
THOMAS NAST
and closest to the revolution of the Enlightenment that gave
birth to the United States than any other. This struggle is a
continuation of what Washington, Jefferson, Adams, et al,
started and unfortunately denied "people of color," vtfio were
regarded as property rather than persons "bom equal" and
certainly not "bom free "
Lincoln's executive order of Emancipation went into
effect January 1, 1863. Though it abolished slavery in the
Confederate states (though not those under Union control),
it was probably not legal according to U.S. civil law. To remedy
any deficiencies in the proclamation in regard to its legal stand
ing, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was introduced
in Congress in 1864 and was ratified in 1865, the year the Civil
War ended. It abolished slavery or involuntary servitude in the
United States or anywhere under U.S. jurisdiction. The Emanci
pation Proclamation, though it raised the conflict for union to an
issue of international moral principle, had little initial practical
impact because Lincoln at the time had no authority in the
Confederacy
Lincoln had proposed the proclamation the previous
summer. Secretary of State Seward suggested he wait to
announce it until a significant Union battlefield victory so that
European governments wuld not misinterpret it as a final
"shriek in our retreat."
Lincoln had said at the start of the Civil War. "If I could
preserve the Union by freeing all of the slaves everywhere, I
wuld do so. If I could preserve the Union by freeing none of the
slaves, I would do so. If I could preserve the Union by freeing
some of the slaves I would do so." His critics and some sup
porters thought the proclamation was a cynical act by a weak,
vacillating President. Yet by conceding to "free the few" he
struck to the heart of the conflict and never afterward wavered
from his promise
He got his victory at Sharpsburg, Maryland on Sept
ember 16,1862, near a little creek (and a church named after it)
that forever gave the battle its name, Antietam The Union Army
routed a Confederate invasion of the North It was the single
bloodiest day of the Civil War: at least 15,000 dead on both
sides and another 20,000 wounded or missing (Union losses
alone were twice as many as those of the Normandy D-Day
landings 82 years later.) Five days after Antietam Lincoln issued
his proclamation:
On the first day of January (1863).. all persons
held as slaves within any State or designated part of
a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion
against the United States, shall then be. thenceforth,
and forever free
<*”ll l < lt
\tories
"If my name ever goes into history," Lincoln said, "it was
for this act."
It took a century and a southern President, a member of
the 'Party of Traitors' to take the next step of what emancipation
began. Lyndon Johnson successfully pushed through Congress
the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of 1965 He said:
"Three and a half centuries ago. the first Negroes
arrived. They came in darkness and in chains. The story of our
nation and of the American Negro are like two rivers (that) flow
through the centuries along divided channels. When the Liberty
Bell rang out in Philadelphia, it did not toll for the Negro When
Andrew Jackson threw open the doors of democracy, they did
not open for the Negro ** It was only at Appomattox, a century
ago. that an American victory was also a Negro victory. And the
two rivers, one shining with promise, the other dark-stained with ~
oppression, began to move toward one another "
But rivers of blood course between them. That same
year of 1965 the Watts Riot in Los Angeles erupted, and eight
years ago the worst domestic riot in U.S. history occurred in the
same place because white police who savagely beat a black
man senseless were acquitted by an all v\4iite jury
With few exceptions American blacks are contained and
isolated in urban ghettos in much the manner Nazis forced Jews
into European ghettos. They are denied adequate education,
employment, housing, education or health care, forced to subsist
on deleterious doles stingily appropriated (which are exploited
as examples of the need for abolishing welfare altogether). Their
rage is forced inward against themselves.The barely constrained
contempt whites hold for blacks is probably equally felt toward
vtfiites by blacks vtfio are victims of the antipathy, but outnum
bered 10 to 1 and without the tremendous legal strength and
firepower of the whites, they are generally unable to strike back
without horrendous consequences
Not all whites are racial supremacists, though most are
racist — if not intentionally, usually on impact Yet, although
vtfiites have fought for and some have died for civil rights for
blacks, the prevailing vtfiite attitude toward blacks was summed
up in 1857 by Chief Justice of the U.S Supreme Court Roger
Taney, vtften speaking for the majority in Dred Scott he stated
that Negroes were considered "so far inferior that they had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect."
Racism will only end when children of every race are
taught early that the color of skin is far less than the quality of
hearts and minds That will not be easy No less than the
essential education system of the USA must be uprooted and
rewritten to reflect the common struggle of both races to build
and survive in this country Then perhaps Lyndon Johnson's two
rivers might converge.
"We cannot escape history." Lincoln said to Congress
"We . will be remembered in spite of ourselves No personal
significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us.
The fiery trail through which we pass will light us down, in honor
or dishonor, to the latest generation "
V. O. BLUM
Illustrated by Henk Pander
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