As Donald Trump completes his nomination for the Republican party, a common consensus among pundits is that this is the death of the party of Lincoln. These five articles are dedicated to the idea that the Republican party in 2015, or even in 1960, had long abandoned the principles of Lincoln's Presidency.
The first
article examined the transforming Republican
Party Platform from 1860 to 1944.
The second
article considered three crucial components of
Lincoln's political philosophy, only hinted at in the 1860 party
platform.
The third
article briefly investigated the true
inheritors of Lincoln's ideas, with a focus on Theodore Roosevelt.
For this fourth article, we return to
the Civil War to consider the goals of the Radical Republicans. But
first a story. Don't worry, it's all connected.
Imagine if you will, a situation
between two children aged thirteen: Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael has a
job at the local grocery store, but everyday at school he delivers
his paycheck to Isaac. How does Isaac enforce this? Threats, the
aid of a few friends, and violence if necessary. Why doesn't Ishmael
ask an adult for help? Maybe he's frightened by threats Isaac made,
maybe he has begun believing that this is a fact of life because it
happens regularly, like the rising and setting of the sun, or maybe
the one time he told an adult, the adult said to him to, “be a man
and solve the problem yourself.” So Ishmael never asked anyone else
for help. This continued all through high school, and then
unfortunately, they went to the same college (maybe not, maybe
Ishmael couldn't afford to), where in any case Ishmael had to pay for
his education through loans and a work study, while Isaac had no
distractions from academics. Isaac would track down Ishmael and take
any money beyond what Ishmael required in order to subsist. Isaac
graduated with B's (because he was intelligent, but not incredibly
so), while Ishmael struggled to earn C's because of the stresses and
other impediments to his success.
Finally, out of college, Isaac used the
connections he had cultivated in his spare time to begin a
well-paying occupation, and free of debt he began investing in his
future. Ishmael, with no connections and a unbearable collection of
debt, entered a menial job, earning only enough to survive. He could
never ascend to the level of Isaac. And whenever he did, Isaac and
his friends would show up to tear down any success. If there was
extra cash they threatened Ishmael until he turned it over. If he
was on the verge of receiving a better job, Isaac sabotaged the offer
through his connections. It looked bleak, a distance insurmountable.
Then one day, Isaac died. In his place
he left Jacob, and Jacob did not act toward Ishamael at Isaac had.
And Jacob worked side by side with Ishamel, but Ishmael was old and
wearied. He had a son as well and he bequeathed what he had store up
to his son, Kedar, but it was not even a tenth of what Issac had left
to Jacob, for it was nothing. And the sons of the sons of the sons
of Isaac and Ishmael lived side by side, but the disparity was never
shortened for if the economy was well, Isaac built up wealth and so
did Ishmael, but not at a faster rate and so they were ever distantly
separated as Polaris and Sigma Octantis. And so it may ever be
because the wrongs done to Ishmael by Isaac were never fully undone.
….
The Radical Republicans of the Civil
War and Reconstruction were created out of the firm belief that all
men should be free, regardless of the color of their skin, and that
any and all methods required to procure this freedom were authorized.
They controlled Congress at the conclusion of the Civil War, and
determined to enact legislation before the seceding sates were
allowed to send representatives. Their obstacles were a minority of
northern Democrats, a reluctant majority of moderate Republicans, and
Abraham Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson. The president
became embroiled in a bitter battle over reconstruction, and
persuaded even the moderate Republicans that he was an obstacle for
the Union. The moderates, disgusted by President Johnson's attempt
to scrap the fourteenth amendment and Reconstruction, joined the
Radicals in an attempt to effect a transformative Reconstruction.
What did the Radical's want?
They wanted to withhold the franchise
from those who had rebelled. The elite of the Confederacy would be
punished as benefited traitors. States of the Southern secession
would need fifty percent of voters to swear an oath that they had
never supported the attempt to secede. But this was only one side of
the Radicals' plans, and not of concern for this article.
The other half of the Radical
Republican's work revolved around the newly freed slaves; freedwomen
and freedmen. The Radicals had three issues to resolve. They
desired to increase the national government's power to intervene in
legal affairs effecting African Americans. They knew that the
Southern States could not be trusted to protect the freedwomen. The
Fourteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1875 were incredible
victories in this sphere, but conservative elements of the Supreme
Court did much to dissemble and weaken these protections.
As Reconstruction neared its end,
twelve years after it began, with the North exhausted of enforcing
equality and justice upon the South, it implemented its last
protection; the ballot box. This was the final hope of the Radical
Republicans, as they sensed the tiredness of the North for the issue
of Reconstruction.
And what was the real hope of the
Republicans, by which they had hoped to lift up the freedmen?
Economic equality.
The tool that they wielded was The
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands; The
Freedman's Bureau.
Created in 1865 after much debate and a veto attempt by President
Johnson, its goal were to supervise abandoned land, and protect,
provide for, and educate newly freed slaves. Organized in the
Department of War, under Union General Oliver Otis Howard, it hoped
to relieve physical suffering, oversee labor, organize abandoned
land, create schools, and administrate justice, all for African
Americans in the Southern States. It functioned on a minuscule
budget, and the dream of its adherents was forty acres for every
freedman. The land would come from that which was abandoned, but it
wasn't that simple. Abandoned land was actually land confiscated by
the federal government from Confederate soldiers. At one point the
Freedman's Bureau held over eight-hundred-thousand acres, but the
general pardon to the Confederacy obliterated this possession.
The Freeman's
Bureau existed to aid the destitute survivors of slavery, but the
land it allowed African Americans to farm was handed back to their
former masters, and a limited budget hobbled any real attempts at
economic progress. Of all its work, the educational system was the
most resilient against the forces determined to relegate freed slaves
into near-slavery. Howard University, named after Otis Howard, is
one of the achievements that remains today.
The Freedman's
Bureau ended as Reconstruction faded, in 1876, its aims only half
achieved and later undone as the elements of pre-Civil War Southern
society re-exerted itself. The Freedman's Bureau failed, and the
country failed in its duty. But while some difficulties fade, as
Reconstruction, others are only deferred.
And
because freedwomen and freedmen were left destitute when they need
help most, African Americans have been, largely, unable to raise
themselves economically. As in the analogy above, it is difficult,
if not impossible, to acquire assets when they are stripped away or
if obstacles are placed in the way. Even when these have been
removed, there is still the impediment of economics. Those who have
more are likely to pass on more to their children, while those who
have nothing will pass on the same. And so the median
Caucasian household in the United States has roughly one hundred
thousand in wealth holdings (stock, home, savings account, and other
investments), while the average African American household has only
ten thousand in holdings (It's actually $110,000 to $8,500).
If
the United States had acted in 1865 to solve the difficulty, it would
not be left to our generation to act. But the best opportunity was
missed and the problem still festers. If the federal government
provided guaranteed employment as I argued in The
Jeffersonian Republic,
this would partially alleviate the issue. Yet, even this would only
satisfy the basest requirement of moral duty.
To solve the problem, the nation owes those descended from slaves a
debt. It must provide a monetary compensation, both for deeds of the
past, but also in the interest of lifting a whole race out of poverty
and placing them on an equal footing they would have difficulty
achieving in another century of equality. Those who have much will
continue to exercise privilege and leave much to their children,
making it difficult for those who have little to rise. The issue is
not without precedence. After the interment of Japanese Americans
during the Second World War, they were compensated roughly forty
years later at twenty thousand per person.
Here, though, there is no intent to talk specifics, of which there
are many. Nor is it relevant to discuss the difficulties of such a
proposal. Difficulty is not sufficient to dissuade one from acting
in the right. Of course, the whole exercise may seem unfair to those
who must shoulder the burden. Many of them did nothing wrong, they
enslaved no one, nor took advantage of anyone. But until the full
price is paid for the horror of slavery and its residual effects on
the United States, it will be a sore. The sooner the United States
accepts the great task that remains unfinished, it can become a
nation worthy of the sacrifices that have been made to protect it.
If you're still with us, next week is
the fifth and final article on the Republicans, but actually it's
about the Southern Democrats of the Succession.
The Republicans
Series:
Sources (where not included as links):
The
Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Great Courses: Cycles of
American Political Thought by Joseph Kobylka
The Great Courses: The History of
the United States by Patrick N. Allit
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