Exactly 150 years ago, many white South Carolinians celebrated Christmas aglow in the excitement of having just declared they were seceding from the United States. That some South Carolinians are celebrating that anniversary is less disturbing than that it is no surprise that some South Carolinians are celebrating that anniversary. It's perhaps appropriate that many who don't believe in evolution don't evolve.
As Joan pointed out, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's presidential aspirations may have ended before his campaign could even begin. As Joan so pithily put it:
Judging by how the Right ended up turning on him, and turning fast, they're apparently not ready for such blatant racism becoming the face of the GOP. They prefer a much quieter dog whistle.
Much quieter. So quiet that only racists and those particularly attuned to racism can hear it. But blow it they will. And do. And have done unceasingly since the days of the Confederacy and before.
Last April, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell had to backtrack on his declaration of Confederate History Month, because while attempting to remember the glory days of the antebellum South he somehow omitted to mention that the economy and culture of the antebellum South had been constructed on the abomination of slavery. That's the quieter dogwhistle. As was the declaration a year earlier by Texas Governor Rick Perry that his state could secede, just months after tha inauguration of this nation's first black president. That same month, the state Senate of Georgia approved a resolution that also threatened to dismantle this nation. A month earlier, and just two months after the inauguration of this nation's first black president, a popular right wing gasbag already was talking revolution. But right wing gasbags have a consistent record of blowing dogwhistles, almost as if their careers, such as they are, depend upon doing so.
Earlier this year, in response to McDonnell, I referred to a post by Yale Constitutional Law Professor Jack Balkin, who analyzed some of the Confederacy's founding documents, among them South Carolina's Declaration of Causes:
[p24]
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
[p25]
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
[p26]
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its peace and safety.
On the 4th of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
[p27]
On the 4th of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
[p28]
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
The historical revisionists want us to believe that the Confederacy was about states' rights. And it was. It was very specifically about the claimed right of certain states to allow the ownership of slaves. South Carolina seceded because the newly elected president of the United States wanted to abolish slavery. South Carolina seceded because that president had been elected with the help of black votes. This was the pattern for the entire Confederacy, and Balkin also quoted from the articles of secession of Mississippi and Texas. Suffice to say that slavery was mentioned. Read Balkin's entire post. He also quoted Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens' infamous 1861 Cornerstone Speech:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone 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 normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
As I wrote at the time of Balkin's post, slavery was the Confederacy's defining characteristic; and in a separate piece, Balkin quoted directly from the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. Once again, slavery got an occasional mention. As if it were the key to the Confederacy's existence. Which, in fact, it was. I've cut Balkin's quotes, and I again urge you to click through:
Article I, section 9, clauses 1 and 2:
The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.
In other words, the slave trade was encoded in the Confederate Constitution.
Article I, section 9, clause 4:
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.
Balkin pointed out that this specifically guaranteed the right to own "negro" slaves. The question of whether ownership of slaves of other races may or may not have been banned was left open, but the question of ownership of "negro" slaves was not. The right to own "negro" slaves was to be forever. The Confederate Constitution not only defined itself by slavery, it defined itself by overt racism.
Article IV, section 2, clause 1:
The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
As Balkin pointed out, this went beyond Dred Scott. It was a specific Constitutional protection of slavery. No state could bar people from transporting their slaves across state lines. Slavery was seen to be that important. That clause also very specifically, and very blithely, defined human beings as property.
From Article IV, section 3, clause 3, Balkin quoted a section on what was to happen should the Confederacy acquire new territory:
In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
Once again, the importance of slavery could not be more clear. Defining "negroes" as an inferior race, and protecting the ownership, transportation, and commerce of "negroes" wasn't just a major aspect of the Confederacy, it was the very definition of the Confederacy.
None of this should need to be explained, but we all know the dangers of historical revisionism. It is important to keep the actual history at the forefront of consciousness. Racism and bigotry are so fundamental to the modern conservative movement, and the corporatist media often do their best to normalize it. We must continue to expose it and challenge it. Because few else will.
As FishOutofWater noted, the Republican President Pro-Tempore of the South Carolina Senate last week led a gala celebration of South Carolina's declaration of secession. In this great nation, he had every right to do so. Just as McDonnell and Barbour have the right to support whatever causes with which they want to associate. As long as we keep the facts and the history alive, their doing so will continue to reveal them for what they are.