Without explaining why, Joe Biden joined the ranks of political pandering by attacking South Carolina’s state flag at a Martin Luther King, Jr. event. “If I were a state legislator, I’d vote for it to move off the grounds — out of the state,”, and “as people become more and more aware of what it means to African-Americans here, this is only a matter of time.”
The problem to me is what it is representing to people like Biden, and apparently a lot of African-Americans, is a total ignorance of United States’ history. Rather than simply responding and pandering to the knee jerk reactions to part of an ugly past, history needs to be taught more clearly and capably so that people understand the REAL issue the Confederate flag came to represent the secessionist states. It wasn’t because of slavery. It was because the North kept passing laws that hurt the South’s economy. People like Biden and Dodd seem to ignore one very obvious fact, and it’s a big one, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, two years after the Civil War had begun. The first state that seceded was South Carolina. Now, what has happened over time is people have come to think that slavery was purely a South issue. Here’s a map of slave distribution circa 1860:
Now, although some states didn’t have slaves, it was mainly because they didn’t NEED slaves. It’s easy to criticize and judge something you don’t need. Rice and cotton were big industries in the South, manufacturing moreso in the North. Even given that, slaves were still utlized in the North to some degree. Although few slaves were listed in the Northern states by 1860, they were utilized heavily in the shipping industry based out of the North. Abolishing slavery would have inconvenienced a few in the North, totally devestated the South. Additionally, it wasn’t the whites only that would have been devestated by simply abolishing slavery on a whim, in 1860, there were 291,300 whites. However, there were 412,320 blacks. Totally killing the economy of South Carolina by crippling the rice and cotton production actually caused more harm to African-Americans than whites.
So, what really caused the Civil War if not slavery? Well, slavery to some degree. However, when the United States was formed, the population was fairly evenly divided between the North and South. Over the next 75 years, due to resources and climate, industries started attracting immigrants from Europe in mass. The North’s population, hence its representation in Congress, eventually overwhelmed the South. By 1832, South Carolina was refusing to pay federal taxes, or even collect them. Andrew Jackson threatened to send in federal troops to force South Carolina to pay those taxes. It could be very easily argued that this was the first shot of the Civil War. The South, due to its complete inability to protect itself from the federal government, started becoming very distrustful of that government. Then, on October 22, 1859, this happened:
The John Brown insurrection at Harper’s Ferry. Several ties were made to “free states” supporting the insurrection. This fear caused South Carolina to react to protect itself by forming militias to protect itself from outside influences on their society. These militias, formalized during the Civil War, became the Ku Klux Klan in 1866. Originally organized to protect the South from carpetbaggers from the North, it later morphed in 1915 into what we know of them today. On top of everything else, the Democrat Party completely imploded in 1859. Abraham Lincoln represented a party that had never represented anything tangible and was therefore the perceived runner-up to the three seperate Democrat candidates. Although Lincoln won, he won with far less than half of the popular vote. The South, being a deeply loyal Democrat state, announced the if Lincoln won, they were seceding, even though Lincoln supported states’ rights and originally had no desire to abolish slavery. Now, Lincoln firmly believed in states’ rights. His philosophy was that the states that had legal slavery by their own constitution would be allowed to continue slavery. However, as new states were admitted to the Union, they would be free states only. So, new states were coming into the Union, and had to be free states. This just compounded the Southern fear of their own government as they became more and more outvoted. By the time Lincoln became president, the South had seceded. Lincoln’s catch was a clever one, once the states had seceded, they had to be re-admitted. In order to be re-admitted, they had to be free states. This just guaranteed the South wasn’t coming back. As they did, after Lincoln’s death, they had to be free. As a result of the war and the destruction of their industries, the South took many years to recover. The poorest of the poor in South Carolina, for 100 years, would be the blacks.
So, what that flag represents is what happens when a government becomes so caught up with a social trend that it ignores the hardship reacting to that trend causes. In other words, an intolerent government is not serving its people, and the people have the right to dissolve it.
But, people like Biden and Dodd ( and many others who know better ), aren’t going to go to the trouble of making sure people understand the real history of that flag. They’re going to continue down the road of allowing ignorance to distort and destroy our true history. Once that true history is totally gone, the lessons learned will be as well. And then we’ll be setting ourselves up for the same mistake again.
If I really thought either had a chance of being elected, I’d be a lot more concerned. As it is, I’m just bothered how out of control this issue has gotten and disappointed in the fact that people that should know better prefer to pander to voters than try to correct them.
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Moonage Political Webdream on 02.19.2007
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