Category: Lincoln’s Revolutionary Legacy

Preserving Peace and Good Order

It should be kept in mind that the so-called 14th Amendment was never ratified by the requisite number of States in 1868 and merely declared in force. In that year there were 37 States in the union – a three-fourths vote needed for amendment passage would require 28 States to the positive. Only 22 States had actually ratified the amendment when it was declared passed. Since irregularities were so obvious, Congress then passed a concurrent resolution declaring the amendment to be a part of the Constitution. It was passed in haste, not referred to any committee and discussion was restricted.

Preserving Peace and Good Order

“In 1883 the Supreme Court declared the conspiracy clause of the Congressional Ku Klux Act of 1871 unconstitutional and restricted the application of the law to acts of a State through its officers and not to private citizens. In the same year it declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as invalid.

The act made it criminal for any person to deny to any citizen on account of race or color the full and equal enjoyment of inns, public conveyances, theaters and other places of amusement. The act finally reached the Supreme Court as a result of a hotel hotel-manager in the South having refused accommodations to Negroes, and the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to laws enforcing the amendment, but not the power to regulate internal domestic affairs.

The decision contained the principle upon which the [Southern States have] rested their right to set up social barriers between themselves and Negroes. The principle was that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited State governments from discriminating between whites and blacks in its general legislation, but that this by no means prevented a hotel keeper from or theater-manager from making such a discrimination, nor did the amendment give to Congress any power to regulate theaters or hotels. This power, the Court insisted, still remained in the control of the States.

The Court opinions thus far reveal that the tribunal considered that the Fourteenth Amendment merely aimed to protect the Negro’s civil and political rights, but that it dii not give him a social status, equal, superior or otherwise. The matter of giving him whatever status he may have, therefore, has been left to the individuals in the States . . .

The Court summed up its whole attitude on the subject in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896. The State of Louisiana had required that railway companies in the State provide equal but separate accommodations for white and Negro passengers. Plessy was ejected from a white compartment and arrested for violating State law.

He protested and finally got his protest before the Supreme Court, but the Court held that law was constitutional since it did not interfere with the civil or political equality of the races but was intended rather to preserve peace and good order. The law, the Court said, did not stamp the colored race with any badge of inferiority unless the race chose to put that construction upon it, and equal rights could not be secured to the Negro by an enforced comingling of the two races.”

(The Changing South. William J. Robertson. Boni and Liveright Publishers, 1927, pp. 82-84)

Better to Emulate the Wise Romans

British stateman Benjamin Disraeli viewed the United States as a “territorial democracy,” divided into a personal democracy in the South, and a socialistic and humanitarian democracy in the North. The latter was represented mainly by the abolitionists who saw their cause as transcending all laws or constitutions of state and had its counterpart in European Jacobinism or red republicanism.

At the end of the Civil War, Brownson emphasized that the general government “cannot itself reorganize a State; it has no authority to purge the electoral people and to say who may or may not vote, for the whole question of suffrage and qualifications is left to each State and can be settled neither by an act of Congress nor executive proclamation.”

Better to Emulate the Wise Romans

“[Brownson] maintained that neither the [Lincoln] administration nor Congress ever took, distinctly and decisively, a ground on which the war was defensible . . . for neither party understood where, under our system, the sovereign power is lodged.

But whatever the inner superior merit of the American Constitution, its interpretation is quite another thing altogether. If the [Southern] States had not held the States to be severally sovereign and maintained that the United States are only an agreement or compact, they would not have seceded; and had not the [Northern] States confounded the Union with the general government and manifested a tendency to make it the whole national government, the South would have had no occasion or excuse for secession.

[Brownson] expressed deep regrets over President Andrew Johnson’s proclamation of May 29, 1865, disenfranchising the pars sanior of the whole white Southern society. Of that he wrote:

It exceeded anything ever issued in any age by the most barbarous chieftain. It virtually disenfranchised and outlawed nearly the whole Southern people, certainly every man who could render any efficient service in reorganizing Southern society, and in repairing the disasters of the war.”

This he proscribed as a wholly calamitous policy. What was most needed was to bring about a speedy restoration of the Southern people to citizenship and thus bring the North and South together in friendly and loyal cooperation in binding up the nation’s wounds. To inflict upon the Southern people unnecessary and ill-timed pains and penalties would only be to disgrace the whole American character . . .

“The wise Romans,” he reminded the Northern victors, “never allowed a triumph to a Roman general for victories, however brilliant, won over Romans.”

(Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography. Thomas R. Ryan. Our Sunday Visitor, 1976, p. 647; 649-650; 654; 659)

 

Intruders Within States

It is essential to understand that the word “union” was merely a convenient word to describe the agreement between 13 independent States (as referred to by the 1783 Treaty of Paris and the Articles of Confederation), who in 1789 agreed to a newer governing covenant between them. Of course, this in no way transferred a State’s population and territory into what was referred to as “the Union.” Below, the word “conquered” below reveals all. Hamilton noted in his 1789 Federalist opinion that a war between member States would mean the Constitution was at an end.

Rev. Orestes Brownson (1803-1876) was a Vermont-born preacher who “inclined to the view of his friend, John C. Calhoun, holding that the united States are a confederation of sovereign or independent States,” which was in line with the 1783 Treaty of Paris as England listed each former colony as an independent State.

Intruders Within States

“It was apparent on this theory – that no State could secede – that Lincoln built his executive plan for reorganizing the rebellious States as States in the Union in December 1863.

Brownson objected to the plan primarily as it was a distinctly executive plan [but] in no case, he maintained, did it come within the jurisdiction of the President to institute either military of civil governments in the conquered States or territories. [He] looked upon Lincoln’s plan or reorganization as a dangerous and revolutionary assumption of power contrary to our Constitution and republican form of government. He exposed sharply the equally discrediting alternatives in volved in Lincoln’s plan:

“If the States are still in the Union, the President violates their constitutions, and wars against the essential principle of every State constitution [no right to interfere]; if they are not States in the Union, but, as we maintain, population and territory belonging to the Union, then he transcends his province as executive of the government and attempt to do on executive authority what only Congress can do.”

If the States are still in the Union, as the administration claims, by what right, Brownson wanted to know, had Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as governor of Tennessee; Col Hamilton governor of Texas; Mr. Phelps governor of Arkansas; Eli Thayer as governor of Florida; Edward Stanly as governor of North Carolina; and Col. Shepley as governor of Louisiana. If these respective territories are States in the Union, then these so-called governors are intruders, without any constitutional authority, for under the American Constitution the right to choose its own officers is reserved to the State, “and there is no authority in the President or Congress to appoint a single State officer, not even a constable.” The error of the Lincoln administration, is denying that a State can secede.”

(Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography. Thomas R. Ryan. Our Sunday Visitor, 1976, p. 635)

A War Far, Far Away

The following reminds us of Robert E. Lee’s mid-December 1866 letter to Britain’s Lord Acton, noting that the new highly centralized US government had become despotic at home as well as aggressive abroad.”

The colonial French stronghold of Deinbienphu surrendered to North Vietnamese forces on May 7,1954, leading to the partition of Vietnam into North and South. The latter would be protected by inclusion into the new SEATO defense treaty, which in hindsight was a gross mistake. The author below noted that Eisenhower did “Americanize” the region and commit US prestige to defend a government, which to use Dulles’s phrase, “would lose the support of the people.” It had been Eisenhower himself who predicted the consequences. It would be Eisenhower’s successors who would have to face them.”

A War Far, Far Away

“Still, neither Dulles nor Eisenhower were willing to throw in the towel [in late-April]. They quickly devised an alternative plan by which a United Action coalition could be arranged among France, the ANZUS countries, and the Associated States. Dienbienphu would be lost, but the French could withdraw into defensible enclaves where they could be supported by American air and sea power. The British could join the coalition later. Eisenhower sounded out the Republican leaders.

“There are plenty of people in Asia,” he explained, “and we can train them to fight well. I don’t see any reason for American ground troops to be committed in Indochina, don’t think we need it, but we can train their forces and it may be necessary for us eventually to use some of our planes or aircraft off the coast and some of our fighting craft we have in that area for support.” The essential point was, Eisenhower concluded, “Where in the hell can you let the Communists chip away anymore [sic]. We just can’t stand it.”

“[During a National Security Council meeting on April 29, Eisenhower noted that] the position of the US as the leader of the free world necessitated associates. Without allies “the leader is just an adventurer like Genghis Kahn.” Further, “We would in the eyes of many Asiatic peoples merely replace French colonialism with American colonialism . . . [and] be everywhere accused of imperialistic ambitions. A unilateral intervention would mean a general war with China and perhaps the USSR, which the US would have to prosecute separated from its allies.”

(Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the Fifties. R. Melanson; D. Mayers, editors. University of Illinois Press. 1989, pp. 142-143)

 

Reconstruction Days in Washington

On March 2, 1875, President Grant signed the Civil Rights Bill for which Charles Sumner had labored so many years, and which was a tribute to his memory. Southerners and Democrats in Congress had bitterly contested the Bill, which imposed a $500 fine, upon owners of restaurants, theaters and hotels which refused to accommodate all persons regardless of color. The Bill did not apply to churches nor to schools – and in the South, was held to be an unwarrantable interference with the rights of the individual States, and after a number of test cases in the lower courts, this opinion was sustained by the US Supreme Court.

Reconstruction Days in Washington

“During the Reconstruction period the colored people of Washington were able briefly to enjoy some of those advantages and privileges for which they and their Radical friends had so long struggled. The leaders of the Republican party, well-aware that only the solid support of the colored voters of the South had regained the two-thirds majority of their party in Congress and therefore anxious to preserve their loyalty, treated the colored representatives with a healthy respect.

The largest contingent of Negro congressmen had come from South Carolina, which had been under Republican control since the new state constitution of 1869. The white “Scalawag” members who had been returned to the 41st Congress had reflected little credit on their state or their party. One of them, B.F. Whittemore, had resigned after his sale of West Point cadetships was revealed. Another, C.C. Bowen, the representative for the Charleston district, was jailed for bigamy after a long and sensational trial in the District courts. Convicted by a mixed jury, Bowen was freed after two weeks in prison; he was not, however, renominated for his congressional seat.

Joseph H. Rainey was a mulatto native of Georgetown, SC and a barber. His scanty formal education had been improved by travel in the West Indies. In an interview, Rainey stated it was hard to find rooms in Washington and that colored congressmen were charged more than white men. At Falf’s Bar, across from the Post Office, he had been obliged to pay fifty cents for a glass of beer, the water freely admitting that the extra charge was account of his color.”

(The Uncivil War: Washington During the Reconstruction: 1865-1878. James H. Whyte, Twayne Publishers, 1958, pp. 237-238; 242)

Florida’s Reconstruction

By order of the Sixth District’s Federal military occupation commander, Major-General John Pope, the election of Florida’s constitutional convention members was to be held on November 14, 15 and 16, 1867. Those chosen to register voter names were noted as “pronounced and bitter Republican partisans,” and holding positions as election officers and poll judges.

The struggles over Reconstruction issues in Florida noted below would revive the State’s prewar Democratic party, as conservative citizens became aware of the Republican scheme to form a “ring” to monopolize the State’s railways with New York funding.

Florida’s Reconstruction

“The native whites were not exhibiting interest in registering [under Reconstruction rule]. From Walton County, West Florida, came the report: “I fear this class (negroes, carpetbaggers and scalawags) will control the county unless a greater interest can be awakened.” What is true of Walton is true of most of the counties in the State,” announced the Floridian.

The mass of the whites had refrained from voting, with only 1,220 white votes cast, of which 203 were against assembling the convention. The Conservative party [of native whites] had succeeded neither in making Conservative voters of the negroes nor in preventing them from voting the Republican ticket.

Forty-six delegates were actually returned in this election: eighteen were negroes, and three of the latter were citizens of other States. Of the twenty-seven whites, one or two were Conservatives, fifteen or sixteen were Radical carpetbaggers from the North, and ten or twelve Southern loyalist or “scalawags.”

What were the obvious characteristics of these delegates chosen by the newly enfranchised? Several of the negro members were unlettered – unable to read or write. Two or three of the blacks had evil reputations and would have done better in jail than in legislative halls. Of the whites, the native Union or loyalist element was made up of men of no particular reputation – good or bad – and of mediocre enlightenment.

The carpetbag or Northern element – composing about one-third of the delegates – contained some men of considerable intelligence and passable education. The most cultured member of the convention, probably, was Jonathan Gibbs, a tall and slightly- built man of color indicating mulatto origin. Born in Philadelphia, educated at Dartmouth College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was a fairly successful type of an intelligent black subjected to New England culture.

Sent into Florida for philanthropic work among the negroes. He soon entered politics and was ere long in rubbing shoulders with cantankerous and thieving ignorance. He died before the end of Republican rule, ostensibly from eating too heavy a dinner. It was rumored that he was poisoned by fellow Republicans.”

(The Civil War & Reconstruction in Florida, William Watson Davis, Columbia University, 1913, pp. 491-495)

 

The Great American Misfortune

The Northern States actually gained wealth, population and power between 1861 and 1865, during the concurrent destruction of the American Confederacy. The North’s industrial production exploded and made agriculture prosper, while the flood of European immigration more than replaced the men in blue lost by Grant, Sheridan and Sherman. The South was in shambles and soon the North would send its carpetbaggers and Union League organizers to loot anything of value that remained.

The Great American Misfortune

“On June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger of the Union army landed in Texas. At Galveston he proclaimed, in the name of President Johnson, that the authority of the United States over Texas was restored, that all acts of the Confederacy were null and void, and that the slaves were free. With him, thousands of bluecoats arrived in Texas; 52,000 were sent to the border areas alone. This force was meant to overawe the French in Mexico; the others congregating along the coast were sent as a show of force to keep order in the State. None of these troops proceeded to the old Indian forts; few marched to the interior and most camped in the centers of population in the east. There was no opposition. Thousands of Texans watched Union soldiers march through the State with fife and drum; men, women, and small children saw miles of bayonets go by.

Few Texans saw the fact that the big battalions had won as “right.” They had fought valiantly for the right as they saw it, for the Constitution as their people construed it, and for liberty as Texans felt it. The Texans were stubborn and prideful people. They had conquered Mexicans and driven out Indians. Few Texans then living saw things any other way; the Northern enthusiasm had been a war for democracy had no currency. In 1861, Texas had been an Anglo-Saxon democracy too.

The knowledge of defeat was bitter, but the coming humiliations were worse. The State was placed under military rule and army tribunals replaced the civil courts . . . Army officers were able to act as they saw fit. More galling than the actual atrocities [by Union soldiers], however, was the fact that most Northerners took an almost sadistic pleasure in demeaning or ridiculing the pretensions and folkways of the Southern race.

Thousands of the occupation troops in Texas were composed of Negro regiments. In every locality where Negroes were stationed, there was trouble, without exception. The public could not bar them, but it refused to accept them. Texans took the other side of the street to avoid passing them; women spat on the ground they trod. Men who made gestures of resistance, or who appeared in public in remnants of gray uniforms, were arrested.

Union officers were pariahs, and some reacted bitterly to this. At Victoria, the Negro garrison terrorized the town. Its white officers refused to let any professed Union man or Negro be jailed by local citizens for any offense. At Brenham, Negro troops burned down the town and no soldier or officer was ever brought to trial or admonished for this act. Other Union soldiers raided Brownsville.

This had not happened to Americans before, and few people in the North ever understood its full and lasting effect. The great American misfortune was not that it happened so much as that it was to go on so long. In Texas, outside rule was to last not a few months, but for nine long years. These years seeded for a century certain hatreds, fears, distrusts and suspicions along with psychic damage in the native Texas soul.”

(Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans. T.R. Fehrenbach. Collier Books, 1968, pp. 394-395)

 

The Radical Star Chamber

The Radical element of the Republican party emerged as a means to direct and control Lincoln’s war against the American South. West Point-graduate General George McClellan was an early casualty of Radical meddling as they strove to ensure that Radicalized military commanders- usually inept – were selected for high command.

The Radical Star Chamber

“It is a sordid story of how the people’s representatives, Sumner, Stevens, Wade, Chandler, Trumbull, Henry Wilson, Henry Winter Davis, and others, undertook to determine the conduct of the war for partisan purposes. They are shown as the representatives of the new “bourgeoisie” who ‘intended to do more than use their new-fledged political power to consolidate an already dominant economic position. They meant to extend the new industrial order to the South and make that section an economic adjunct of the North.’

The most certain way to accomplish this double purpose would be to destroy slavery, and with it the Old South. The Radicals ‘loved the Negro less for himself than as an instrument with which they might fasten Republican political and economic control upon the South.’ Lincoln saw the war as a way to preserve the Union while the Radicals saw it as a way to end slavery and the slave owners’ political power.

Victory must not come, therefore, through Democratic generals like McClellan, nor after a short war which would leave slavery untouched. This was a view which sometimes placed Radicals in the ‘position of regarding Union defeats on the battlefield as helpful to their cause.’ The Radicals would dominate the Republican party, Congress, and the Executive. They would form the President’s Cabinet, shape his policies, select his generals, and control the patronage.

The Committee for the Conduct of the War was hit upon as the Congressional agency over which the President would have no power. It was a Court of Star Chamber in every respect. It developed a refined technique for browbeating witnesses, suppressing testimony, damaging reputations, making oblique attacks upon Lincoln, and all under the guise of impartial investigations designed to mobilize efficiently the forces of victory.

With Washington full of amateur strategists, the army full of politicians, Lincoln indecisive and desperate for sound advice, and the Cabinet a hodge-podge, it is not surprising that the Radicals, with principles too high to let the Constitution stand in the way, soon got the smell of blood in their nostrils and were away in full pursuit. McClellan was fair game but difficult to corner, although some of his subordinates were the victims of pot-shots. Eventually, McClellan’s own weaknesses combined with the Radical sniping caused Lincoln to send him for cover.

The Radicals were adept at picking political generals who could not fight. These usually fell by the way, with never a tear shed by those who had urged them on Lincoln as saviors of the republic. When a general favored by the Radicals lost a battle, the blame was put on a Democratic or conservative subordinate; if a conservative won a battle, as in the case of Meade at Gettysburg, it was carefully explained that the credit should go elsewhere.

Even Grant was assailed as a Democrat until the Radicals decided they wanted to annex him, and Grant was politician enough to want to be annexed.”

(Lincoln and the Radicals, T. Harry Williams. University of Wisconsin Press, 1941. Review by R.H. Woody, Duke University. North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XIX, No. 4, October 1942, pp. 410-411)

 

Truman’s War Bypasses Congress

Lincoln established the unconstitutional precedent of a president waging war without congressional approval. The following is drawn from a chapter entitled “A Costly Mistake: War Without Congressional Approval.” As a note of clarification, Sen. Robert Taft was not an “isolationist” but an anti-interventionist who advocated avoidance of European or Asian wars, concentrating instead on solving its domestic problems. He advocated a strong American military as adequate protection and opposed Truman’s unconstitutional actions.

Truman’s War Bypasses Congress

“After Sen. Scott Lucas of Illinois had read to the Senate on June 27 Truman’s initial statement committing US air and naval forces and ordering the fleet to neutralize Formosa, Senator James P. Kem, Republican of Missouri, rose: “I notice that in the President’s statement he says ‘I have ordered the fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa.’ Does that mean he has arrogated to himself the authority of declaring war?”

“A state of emergency exists,” Lucas said, ignoring the fact that Truman had not legally declared one. Based on the action of the United Nations Security Council,” Lucas explained, the President of the United States has ordered action. It is a demonstration of our keeping the faith.”

Republican Senator John Bricker of Ohio interposed, “Am I correct in saying that the President’s action was taken as a result of the cease-fire order issued by the Security Council? Lucas said that Bricker was correct as far as action in Korea was concerned. Watkins declared that Truman had taken a step leading toward war.

“The Congress is now in session,” the senator said, “and unless there is power in the United Nations to order our forces into action of this kind which may result in a major world clash, then I think we should have been informed by the President in a message to Congress today. As I recall, we were told time and time again when we were considering the [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] that nothing would take us into war under that pact without action by Congress. The President could not do it . . . Now, according to the action taken, by the mere order and request of the United Nations, our troops can be sent into a fighting war without Congress saying ‘yes or no.’

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power to declare war.

The big gun went off in the Senate on June 28. In a crackling speech, Robert Taft, “an old-time isolationist” to Truman – alleged:

“a complete usurpation by the President of authority to use the armed forces of the country. His action has brought about a de facto war with the government of northern Korea. He has brought that war about without consulting Congress and without congressional approval. We have a situation in which in a far-distant part of the world one nation has attacked another, and if the President can intervene in Korea without congressional approval, he can go to war in Malaya or Indonesia or Iran or South America.” With but the slightest detour on a map Taft might have included Vietnam.  

“Mr. President”, a reporter asked, “everybody is asking in this country, are we or are we not at war?”

“We are not at war,” Truman replied and later added that “the members of the United Nations are going to the relief of the Korean Republic to suppress a bandit raid . . .”

“Mr. President, would it be correct, against your explanation, to call this a police action under the United Nations?”

Truman responded, “Yes, that’s exactly what it amounts to . . .”

Again, Truman had let a reporter put words in his mouth that were later to be held against him. He did not initiate, nor volunteer, the phrase “police action” any more than he had “red herring,” but the result was to be the same as if he had.”

(Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949-1953. Robert J. Donovan. W.W. Norton & Company, 1982, pp. 219-223)

 

State’s Rights and Civil Rights

“States’ Rights are easy enough to define. The Tenth Amendment does it succinctly: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people [of the States]”

Civil rights should be no harder. In fact, however – thanks to extravagant and shameless misuse by people who ought to know better – it is one of the most badly understood concepts in modern political usage.  Civil rights [are] frequently used synonymously with “human rights” – or with “natural rights.”

As often as not, it is simply a name for describing an activity that someone deems politically or socially desirable.  A sociologist writes a paper proposing to abolish some inequity, or a politician makes a speech about it – and, behold, a new “civil right” is born!  The Supreme Court has displayed the same creative powers.

A civil right is a right that is asserted and is therefore protected by some valid law. It may be asserted by the common law, or by local or federal statutes, or by the Constitution; but unless a right is incorporated in the law, it is not a civil right and is not enforceable by the instruments of the civil law.

There may be some rights – “natural,” “human,” or otherwise – that should also by civil rights.  But if we desire to give such rights the protection of the law, our recourse is to a legislature or to the amendment procedures of the Constitution.  We must not look to politicians, or sociologists – or the courts – to correct the deficiency.

[The] federal Constitution does not require the States to maintain racially mixed schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly convinced – not only that integrated schools are not required – but that the Constitution does not permit any interference whatsoever by the federal government in the field of education.

It may be wise or expedient for Negro children to attend the same schools as white children, but they do not have a civil right to do so which is protected by the federal Constitution, or which is enforceable by the federal government.  The intentions of the founding fathers in this matter are beyond any doubt: no powers regarding education were given to the federal government.”

(The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater, Victor Publishing Company, 1960, pp. 31-34)