In spite of what Michele Bachmann believes, our Founders did not "work tirelessly" to abolish slavery. Slavery was recognized in the American Colonies before the Revolutionary War, and was not formally abolished until the Civil War in 1861-1865.
At first, slavery seemed to be largely a north-south issue. Politicians agreed to a Mason-Dixon line, deliberately adding similar numbers of free- and slave-States to maintain a kind of equity in Congress. It might not have been so much virtue as cheap labor that made slavery synonymous with the South, where cotton was king.
At the time of the Civil War, Southerners were largely Democrats, and Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Southerners argued for States Rights, a weak Federal government, so that southern States could manage their own affairs, and attitudes.
It is probably not possible for a society to practice slavery unless it convinces itself that the slaves are somehow inferior beings. During protracted wars, it seems to be psychologically necessary to think of the enemy as less-than-human in order to tolerate the massive killing involved. We develop scornful names for the people we have to kill. I will not rehearse them. We do the same for slaves, effectively denying them equality with ourselves. We have such names, still, for Blacks, women, Asians, and Indigenous People whose land we want to take. The wars end, but the names and the attitudes continue.
Gradually, a massive flip-flop of political definitions has occurred.
The Civil War ended, but some of the attitudes endured. While there were Democrats and Republicans in both the North and the South, racial attitudes and beliefs trumped political and religious ideology. For instance, only two Christian denominations did not split--North and South--because of slavery. Quakers were nearly universal, whether in the North of the South, in opposition to slavery, and Roman Catholics did not split into northern and southern branches because they were essentially controlled from Rome, not Philadelphia or Atlanta. Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans essentially formed Northern and Southern organizations, accommodating to racial attitudes where they were.
So at the time of the Civil War, the Republicans pressed for an end to slavery, and the Democrats in the South defended it and States Rights. As recently as during the Presidency of Richard Nixon, Democrats were a curiously divided party, the Northern Democrats generally favoring an end to Segregation, and the Democrats in the South--sometimes called Dixiecrats--of quite another opinion. President Nixon saw that if he could pick up Dixiecrat votes--that is to say, Southern votes--he could reshape the election results. And that is how the people who used to be Dixiecrats became Republicans.
The most recent election demonstrates that the process is almost complete now. The South is Republican territory. The coasts are generally Democratic, and the Middle of the Country muddles about, not having a name of their own, but nominating hog castrators and expressing strong discontent with recent immigrants. Old time immigrants were heroes. Last generation immigrants were good folk wanting to better themselves. Recent immigrants ought to "go home", even if they were born here, and form a long line and ask nicely if they can dig potatoes for us, temporarily.
Nobody that I know of calls him- or herself a racist, although lots of people love to speak of "American Exceptionalism" and how their ancestors "immigrated legally". "Legally" actually means, in most cases, that there were hardly any rules at all, except that you had to be from Europe, not Asia or Africa. We speak, instead, of "States Rights", and "Law and Order", and "family values", and "safe neighborhoods".
Racism is deep in our culture. One has to be blind not to see that. Most of us--I think, most of us--would prefer not to talk about it. So we talk about safe neighborhoods, instead, and respect for law, and how much we hate the government intruding on our lives, telling us what to do.
At first, slavery seemed to be largely a north-south issue. Politicians agreed to a Mason-Dixon line, deliberately adding similar numbers of free- and slave-States to maintain a kind of equity in Congress. It might not have been so much virtue as cheap labor that made slavery synonymous with the South, where cotton was king.
At the time of the Civil War, Southerners were largely Democrats, and Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Southerners argued for States Rights, a weak Federal government, so that southern States could manage their own affairs, and attitudes.
It is probably not possible for a society to practice slavery unless it convinces itself that the slaves are somehow inferior beings. During protracted wars, it seems to be psychologically necessary to think of the enemy as less-than-human in order to tolerate the massive killing involved. We develop scornful names for the people we have to kill. I will not rehearse them. We do the same for slaves, effectively denying them equality with ourselves. We have such names, still, for Blacks, women, Asians, and Indigenous People whose land we want to take. The wars end, but the names and the attitudes continue.
Gradually, a massive flip-flop of political definitions has occurred.
The Civil War ended, but some of the attitudes endured. While there were Democrats and Republicans in both the North and the South, racial attitudes and beliefs trumped political and religious ideology. For instance, only two Christian denominations did not split--North and South--because of slavery. Quakers were nearly universal, whether in the North of the South, in opposition to slavery, and Roman Catholics did not split into northern and southern branches because they were essentially controlled from Rome, not Philadelphia or Atlanta. Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans essentially formed Northern and Southern organizations, accommodating to racial attitudes where they were.
So at the time of the Civil War, the Republicans pressed for an end to slavery, and the Democrats in the South defended it and States Rights. As recently as during the Presidency of Richard Nixon, Democrats were a curiously divided party, the Northern Democrats generally favoring an end to Segregation, and the Democrats in the South--sometimes called Dixiecrats--of quite another opinion. President Nixon saw that if he could pick up Dixiecrat votes--that is to say, Southern votes--he could reshape the election results. And that is how the people who used to be Dixiecrats became Republicans.
The most recent election demonstrates that the process is almost complete now. The South is Republican territory. The coasts are generally Democratic, and the Middle of the Country muddles about, not having a name of their own, but nominating hog castrators and expressing strong discontent with recent immigrants. Old time immigrants were heroes. Last generation immigrants were good folk wanting to better themselves. Recent immigrants ought to "go home", even if they were born here, and form a long line and ask nicely if they can dig potatoes for us, temporarily.
Nobody that I know of calls him- or herself a racist, although lots of people love to speak of "American Exceptionalism" and how their ancestors "immigrated legally". "Legally" actually means, in most cases, that there were hardly any rules at all, except that you had to be from Europe, not Asia or Africa. We speak, instead, of "States Rights", and "Law and Order", and "family values", and "safe neighborhoods".
Racism is deep in our culture. One has to be blind not to see that. Most of us--I think, most of us--would prefer not to talk about it. So we talk about safe neighborhoods, instead, and respect for law, and how much we hate the government intruding on our lives, telling us what to do.
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