More Than Historical Stupidity in Paul's Slavery Crack

No shot GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul tossed out yet another juicy zinger this time on Meet the Press when he said that Lincoln was a bad guy for fighting the civil war. Paul's solution: simply shell out some cash, buy the slaves, and set them free. One would like to believe that Paul is just jerking off the press and the public with his shoot from the lip, loose brained, solutions on everything from taxes to ending the Iraq war. And that his dig at Lincoln for fighting the Civil War is the latest in the train of dumb wit Paulisms.

But the Civil war and the Lincoln jibe needs a response for two reasons. The first is for its idiot read of history. Lincoln as an Illinois Congressman in 1849 proposed a bill for voluntary and gradual emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia. Lincoln toyed with the idea of offering compensation to get the slavemasters to go along with it. Congress dominated by Southerners and the slave owners showed absolutely no interest in tqking a government bribe to give up their slaves in D.C. Lincoln didn't give up the idea. In 1861, Lincoln, now president, dangled the carrot of federal dollars in front of the slaveowners in the Border States. He'd pay them $400 per slave to free them. There were no takers. The next year, Lincoln, even arm twisted Congress to pass a resolution providing for paynment to the slaveowners in the Border States and elsewhere. That went nowhere too.

The slave masters understood something that Paul doesn't. Slavery was not an aberrant, patchwork system that consigned a few million luckless blacks to hard, unpaid labor. Slavery was a cornerstone of the Southern economy. It wove personal lifestyle, custom, and comfort together for the benefit of the slave owners. Slavery was slyly encoded in articles in the Constitution, protected by court decisions, and bolstered by the full force of federal law (the enforcement of the fugitive slave law). Lincoln had a better chance of dismantling slavery with dollars than Paul has of winning the White House.

The other more compelling reason to take on Paul's dumb crack is that while the North may have won the war, the South won the peace. No other region has so dominated national politics--the military, the courts, Congress, the White House--as the South. It retooled slavery into a iron clad sytem of Jim Crow segregation, economic domination, and state government sanctioned violence to maintain power. No amount of money could have changed that.

The South maintained political dominance for nearly century after the end of slavery by forcing every Democrat or Republican that wanted to bag or stay in the White House to do and say as little as possible about race and racism, slavishly adhere to states rights, and pander to Southern politicians. When the civil rights movement momentarily changed this neat political formula white Southern Democrats simply swapped their Democratic political pin for a Republican one. In the eyes of many white Southerners, the Democratic Party became the hated symbol of integration and civil rights.

The big break came with Republican Barry Goldwater's presidential bid in 1964. Southern politicians adroitly read the political tea leaves, stumped for Goldwater and urged Southern Democrats to do the same. In the process, he dropped the racially inflammatory rhetoric that had long been his and other Southern politicians' stock in trade. This ignited the first big exodus of Southern whites from the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. The stampede got even bigger in 1968. President Nixon formally crafted the "Southern Strategy." That strategy became the anchor of Republican politics in the South. In the years to come, Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and the elder Bush also made masterful use of Nixon's Southern Strategy to win elections and tighten the Republican grip on the South.

President Bush, like Paul a fellow Texan, benefited as much if not more than any other politician from the Southern Strategy. In the 2000 presidential election, he snatched the electoral votes of all the states of the Old Confederacy. Without the granite-like backing of these states, Democratic presidential contender Al Gore would have easily won the White House, and the Florida vote debacle would have been a meaningless sideshow. He swept the 11 old slave states again in 2004. By whopping margins, white males provided the cushy margin of victory in these states. No amount of federal dollars would have changed the white Southern mindset toward the Democrats. They were still seen as liberal, big government, tax and spend social tinkers, especially on racial matters.

Millions in the South and elsewhere agree with Paul that the legacy of slavery has ruined the nation. If they could turn the clock back a century and a half they'd do just what Paul says and would not shed one drop of blood to free the slaves. Worse, they wouldn't spend a penny to free them either. My suspicion is that neither would anti-big government, abolish taxes Paul. Lincoln are you listening?

Comments

[jhNY]

Slavery was not "slyly encoded" by the Founders in the US Constitution. It was written in, thereby institutionalized, on the very first page, as was the formula for calculating representation in Congress. A slave counted as a 3/5th of a person by the Constituti­onally-man­deated census takers, so that every five slaves gave the white population of a slave state another three members to add of his state's official population, thus swelling the halls of Congress with more representatives than the slave states might have expected to have without this constituional provision-- representatives who could be counted on to vote down any abridgement of the rights of slave holders.

It is foolish historical revisionism to imagine that the Constitution might have been ratified by the southern states without this method of census calculation, or without slavery inself being institutionalised within the Constitution itself. The slavery issue was fundamental to the elites who profited by use of slave labor-- which includes many northern banks in whose vaults the proceeds from the cotton, sugar and tobacco trades reposed. Their representatives to the constitutional convention insisted on the inclusion of the census formula and the upholding in law of the rights of slave holders, and would not have joined the new nation without them.

When concern that these rights might be taken away or further curtailed reached a crisis point, the slave-holding states reacted by seceding, one after another, and eventually forming a confederacy-- a right they had in the constitution they had signed only 80 years previous. Lincoln's decision to leave federal troops in place in the seceding states was the immediate and precipitous cause for war between the federal government and those states.

To put it plain: Slave states joined the union on condition that their 'peculiar institution' had been vouchsafed in law, and would otherwise not signed the Constitution. Slave states attempted to leave the union (by Constitutional means) when their 'peculiar institution' was perceived to have come under threat of curtailment or outright abolition.

[sdczen]

Earl: First off it's easy for you and Ron Paul to give your hindsight on the Civil War. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a historian that would think that the Civil War was largely about slavery. The fact is that it was not. Slavery was a side-note to the civil war. You can look no further than what Abe Lincoln said himself if you want a tidbit of proof.

It's a wonderful thing that slavery was abolished around that time. However, it does everyone a disservice when you distort history with your short-sided view. Not to mention your gracious acceptance of 600,000+ Americans were killed, entire villages burned, women raped.

It's also noteworthy that good old Abe suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned tens of Thousands of Northerners, including politicians, newspaper editors and anyone else that opposed his aggressive policies. He trampled the Constitution and really didn't care about ending slavery as long as he could "Save the Union".

It's horribly disingenuous of you to bash Ron Paul's statements about Lincoln. Imagine that a man bold enough to STOP and think about a better way to accomplish things in the world. Imagine a man bold enough to NOT want to slaughter thousands of innocent people. Imagine a man bold enough to stand up to and be the lonely voice of reason. Imagine a man that is bold enough to fight for the rights of every single individual.

That man is Ron Paul.

[akhmed]

Since the South "won the peace" after the Civil War, doesn't that cut into your criticism of Rep. Paul's statement that the Civil War was counterproductive? A war that kills 600,000 people to eliminate slavery in name only seems pretty bad to me.

[lnardozi]

So what you're telling me is all southerners support slavery, and only the votes of white male southerners count? Whoo, man. If there's a bigot in the room it's not Dr. Paul, it's you. I'm glad all the other people living in the south, like white women and all people of all other races don't get down to the polls. In Virginia we're mostly Republican but it doesn't have anything to do with Jim Crow, it has to do with religion. Not the smartest way to determine political affiliation, I'll grant, but what people want you to do is suck up to their televangelist of choice. I don't see much chance of Dr. Paul doing that, he thinks religion and politics should be separate so I doubt he'll even meet with religious leaders. All the same, we will ALL go vote - every single Paul supporter. Rest assured we will make our votes count. Why don't you go out and vote for someone that has WRITTEN 6 books on economics? What's that? Your candidate hasn't written ANY books on economics? Well, looks like you'll be driving our economy straight down the crapper.

[Mutex]

Do you find it surprising that when you debate yourself you always win?

I see next to no mention of the 600,000 dead and the countless injuries and shattered lives.

I see no mention that the natural course of human events has been to acknowledge the evil of slavery everywhere else in the world...wi­thout civil war.

In your mind is there any price that would have been too high for delaying the end of slavery?

You kind of remind me of the Republicans who deep down believe that even if we have to kill all 25 million Iraqis to bring them 'freedom and democracy'­...'it is the right thing to do'.

Ron Paul has figured out that war is seldom, if ever, the best solution to any problem.

I would much rather be lead by someone with Ron Paul's 'dim-witted' ideas than by all the Clintons, Obamas and Giulianis who want to perpetuate the status quo.

But hey, you keep voting for the person who's lies you like the best.

By the way, how's that been working for you?

[JohnJames]

Great column and very well written as usual. You're one of the few truly informative columnists on this site.

[StephenSmoliar]

I particularly like that turn of phrase, "idiot read of history." My concern about many Libertarians (including Paul) resides in that old Mencken quip that every complex question has a simple answer, which is wrong. Libertarians seem to have a simple answer for every complex question, which is usually arrived at through filtering out any "inconvenient data" that might undermine the answer. We do not like to be told that real life is a complicated matter, which is probably why Libertarianism is so appealing; but its simplistic approach to reasoning is as appalling as it is appealing!