Underbelly is always good

But is he really keeping the edited diary of George Templeton Strong sitting around so that he can see what Strong was thinking 150 years ago today? Strong on Lincoln:

He is a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla, in respect of outside polish (for example, he uses "humans" as English for homines), but a most sensible, straightforward, honest old codger.  The best President we have had since old Jackson's time, at least, as I believe; for Zachary Taylor's few days of official life can hardly be counted as a presidential term.  His evident integrity and simplicity of purpose would compensate for worse grammar than his, and for even more intense provincialism and rusticity.

The bolded part is, of course, Strong being an asshole. But this is how the Republican coalition was forged: the committed egalitarians had to win power, and so they had to embrace to some extent the white supremacy of the time, even more than the white supremacy they had been unable to avoid imbuing and taking into their worldview. That meant winning over people like Strong, who saw reference to blacks as humans to be a stretch.

God what an ass

Delegate Holman, to the Indiana State Constitutional Convention in 1851. This convention, more than any of the other antebellum conventions I have read, is the supremacists' coven: male supremacy, white supremacy, Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

"It was remarked by the gentleman from Posey, that he feared women did not receive the same consideration which they would receive if they were allowed to exercise the right of suffrage; [Holman] feared that the same justice is not meted out to them, that would be if they exercised the rights of the politician. I have no doubt, sir, that in such an event, our whining politicians would be everlastingly weeping over the wrongs done to the rights of the fair voters, as they are now, upon every occasion, mourning over the wrongs which their fellow citizens are suffering, with very commendable patience however, but I doubt, sir, whether the sparkling eyes of our fair friends would grow any brighter, or that their rosy lips would wear any sweeter smiles if they were besieged by politicians asking hnmbly for their votes."

God forbid.

This is the convention where delegate Dobson would declare, rather impetuously,

"whenever you begin to talk about making negroes equal with white men, I begin to think about leaving the country."

This would be mocked throughout the country at the time, and, to my ears at least, rings in Mark Twain's portrayal of Huck's pap:

"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free nigger there from Ohio -- a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane -- the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me -- I'll never vote agin as long as I live.

Back to Indiana: the delegate was offering an amendment, to the a resolution inquiring as to whether the committee on the elective franchise would find it expedient to report back a separate provision on black suffrage that would be sent to the people for popular rejection, for such was the foregone conclusion. The amendment was that anyone who would vote at the referendum in favor of black suffrage would themselves lose the right to vote, unless the egalitarian suffragists were in the majority. Dobson continues:

"The substance of my amendment is--and I want it fairly understood --that if those who are in favor of negro suffrage are in the majority, we will leave the country;  and if we are stronger than they, let them leave and we will remain. Let every man be asked this question at the polls, and, as he shall answer, let it be known who he is. The free soil question does not come up here that is quite a different thing. But as far as the question of negro suffrage is concerned, if we are to have any more of it, I want to act upon jt in this most definite manner. I am satisfied that perhaps three fourths of the citizens of the  State would rather leave, if the negroes were to be allowed to come here and exercise the elective franchise." 

One delegate, Barry, who disclaimed and qualified and caveated, nonetheless had the courage--for it is courage, of a sort--to offer an amendment directing that the committee report back a suffrage clause allowing blacks to vote. He would not support his amendment. This, more daring stand was undertaken by  Edward Ralph May, a Democrat and a member of the state legislature. The vote was 1-122. He would die one year later, with his wife. Time to praise famous men.

Update: May only grows in esteem:

" Respecting woman, sir, it is unbecoming in me to say much. My theory, however, is this: I believe woman to be essentially the same with man. Whether we regard her moral, her physical, or her intellectual nature, we find her the same with man, yet different. And, sir, as I think, in that difference consists woman's excellency .... [U]pon the vexed question of woman's rights. My theory is simply this, I can give it in a single remark: In my treatment of women I would always act upon this general principle, to grant unto woman whatever rights and privileges she demanded at the hands of man. ... I say then , in all my legislation for women I would be guided by the one principle to grant unto her whatever, on the whole she might think necessary for her good--I do not mean what some individual one might ask, not what the young girl might heedlessly wish,  or the old woman might peevishly crave,  but what women in the aggregate, women collectively, might ask for--... And, sir, for one, I very frankly say that if after such a mutual consultation and such a deliberate consideration, women should then ask to share the rights and privileges of man, I would be the last person to withhold from them a single one. But, sir, I would also ask woman to recollect that from the exercise of man's rights and privileges would result certain duties from the performance of which she must not seek to shrink."

Now there is still plenty in here to condemn and critique, the categorization of different types of women, from the foolish to the peevish. But, as I've written before, the past can be lonely. You search in vain for someone who will not disappoint, but are left a heart with no companion, a soul without a king. So you take what you can get. Obviously, I expect May to be defending slavery an all-out assault on the rights of labor in the next few pages, but I will savor the moment while it lasts.

What I mean...

My dissertation (punchline) argues that the politics of suffrage and other rights of citizenship occur within a political order premised upon commitments--both ideas and institutions--of belonging. That is, ideas of who are the people are not only the object of contestation, but they also establish the parameters within which politics at a given place and a given time occur.

This is not a very radical claim, but it is often treated as inconsequential: structural shifts, party competition, threat of popular unrest, etc., are presented  as the crucial processes through which the suffrage is extended. Ideas about democracy are treated as almost wholly irrelevant, and ideas about belonging are seen as epiphenomenal: once the struggle for inclusion is accomplished, the ideas about who is and is not a citizen will change to reflect the new arrangements. So, the idea that African Americans are full members of the American polity comes subsequent to the achievement of full membership in the polity, or, if it comes prior, it is not so important as the actual political pressure brought to bear by the civil rights movement.

I do not claim that these political processes are irrelevant, nor even that the literature is mistaken in giving them primary emphasis. Rather, I claim that the processes most scholarship highlights are occurring within a given political order, and that this order--in which ideas of belonging are central--alters the incentives and opportunities for political agents in such a way that makes inclusion more or less difficult. It was easier to include the white working classes, because the political order established by the Jeffersonians was one that had an ideational commitment to the idea that the laboring classes were not just fully part of the community, but were possibly its most virtuous and republican part. It was more difficult for anti-slavery, abolitionists, and black activists to secure the right to vote to blacks because of these same ideational commitments, which premised membership in the community not on class, as had been the case prior, but on race. The same political processes were at work for both categories, but there was greater chance of success for one than the other. More interestingly, sometimes the same political processes would lead to opposite outcomes, precisely because of how the ordering of citizenship and belonging structured these processes.

There is often an implicit belief that the working and laboring classes, while alternately seen as dangerous, lacking in awareness, thriftless, dependent, etc., were at the very least seen as part of the community. That is, we assume, looking back, that there was a vertical integration of the imagined communities of the early republic: there were upper and lower classes, but they believed they were of the same people, of the same community. Stressing that this was in fact not always the case, and that it was the case--and that it being the case matters for subsequent politics of rights--primarily because of the particular exigencies of Revolution and the establishment of a new political order, is one of the central points of my dissertation.

So, from another place and time, I bring two quotes, which I think illustrate something of what I mean when I say no, the laboring classes and the farmers were not always seen as part of the community.

Bagehot:

Pubic opinion is the test of [a] polity; the best opinion which, with its existing habits of deference, the nation will accept: if the free government goes by that opinion, it is a good government of its species; if it contravenes that opinion, it is a bad one. Tried by this rule, the House of Commons does its appointing business well.  it chooses rulers as we wish rulers to be chosen.  If it did not, in a speaking and writing age we should soon know.  I have heard a great Liberal statesman say: "The time will come when we must advertise for a grievance."...The working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion, and therefore, the fact of their want of influence in Parliament does not impair the coincidence of Parliament with public opinion.  They are left out  in the representation, and also in the thing represented.

Burke:

I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political view, are to be called the people.... In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information more or less and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such) may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this body more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British publick and it is a publick very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of protection; when strong, the means of force. They who affect to consider that part of us in any other light, insult while they cajole us; they do not want us for counseilors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.

Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins, utterly incapable of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it by English cabal, they will have it by the cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated.

 These are English quotes, but what is striking to me is how closely they match the pre-Revolutionary, and especially the pre-Jeffersonian language of America. Statements such as this do live on in America in the antebellum period, but never so brashly, always couched, and almost always on the losing end. This does not necessarily mean they are no longer believed or maintained, but that the new political order makes their defense intolerable.

p.s. Nationalism is relevant here. The language of a distinction between the people--as a political community--gives way over the 19th century to that of the people--as a nation, encompassing all who share blood, culture, or some other such element constitutive of belonging.

Social Equality

Social intercourse and the suffrage.

"They suggest that we may confer political equality on the coloured people, without admitting them to social equality…. Now, sir, I submit to the gentlemen, whether these political rights, of which we are speaking, do not depend, for their preservation and right exercise, on social intercourse and equality. Not that every man, must associate with every man in the community, but I hold there must be that free and unrestrained interchange of sentiments on public questions, which can only attend a state of general equality, if we would properly prepare the mass of men to exercise political suffrage.... These separate circles or little societies which wealth or adventitious circumstances, and not our political institutions, have made distinct, have connecting links that extend the opinions thus formed by the contact of minds, from and to the extremities of the body politic, and keep up a sympathy between the whole and all its parts; and here is the foundation of the system of universal suffrage. For suffrage is only the expression of the opinions which are perpetually maturing under the influence of social intercourse and equality."--Woodward, delegate to the Pennsylvania constitutional convention, 1838.

I have argued, and continue to, that at least some of the resonance of 'social equality' in the post-bellum period as an obstacle to state intervention in civil rights came about because of it was strategically deployed by racial egalitarians who were attempting to secure rights of political and civil equality (for principled reasons, as well as the huge labor interest once slavery was abolished in ensuring that free blacks would not remain a helot class) against understandings of citizenship and belonging that remained anchored in the white male republic.

The counter, however, is that the opponents of black suffrage and civil rights in the antebellum period had their own sophisticated understanding of the importance of social equality: only under conditions of social equality and intercourse could there be the formation of sympathy with the whole, that the opinions exchanged, developed, and defended in these networks of equal intercourse incrementally structured a broad attachment of these "separate circles or little societies" with a community in formation. Absent this sympathy, it was class warfare, and universal suffrage would be simply a weapon in the hands of the property-less. And absent this sympathy, foreclosed by the lack of social intercourse on a plane of equality, the extension of the suffrage to blacks would have been creating a scenario in which electoral competition became an arena for race war.

Clearly the resonance of concerns over social equality come in part from the fact that both the advocates and opponents of black civil and political rights embraced this discourse, just as it is clearly the case that they embraced it because of its broader resonance. But by looking at the discourse from the perspective of the strategic calculus of racial egalitarians, we miss the nuanced concerns of antebellum white supremacists. And we should listen to these dead activists, however distasteful, because the specific content of these concerns--that suffrage and representative government requires a sympathy for the community, a belief in a common weal, and that these are rooted in patterns of social intercourse that are highly resilient in the face of state intervention--is one  that we need to take very seriously.

Let us now praise forgotten men

I wrote something a few days ago about the inability to find heroes in history. I don't want to suggest that I am looking for these, but when hanging out in their world there is an urge to find sympathetic persons to cheer on. 


Given my focus on suffrage, one obvious metric is whether someone supported the extension of the right to vote to all classes and races. Most come up short, with the class conservatives most likely to be taking the egalitarian position on race and vice versa. So those who defy this pattern, and defend an unambiguously egalitarian agenda, are worthy of note.


In the Pennsylvania constitutional convention of 1837-38, there were only between 5-8 members who supported both.[1] 


Earle, of Philadelphia
Clarke, of Indiana County
Dickey, of Beaver County
Farrelly, of Crawford County
Cleavinger, of Greene County
Hayhurts, of Columbia County
Purviance, of Butler County
and White, of Tioga County.


Even the beloved Thad. Stevens [2] would vote against removing the taxpayer qualification. All but Dickey and Purviance (who were Anti-Masons) were Democrats, which was the party most vigorously opposed to black suffrage, so their courage on this issue is even more notable. 


Earle is especially notable. He was a Democrat, the publisher of the Mechanics' Free Press and Reform Advocate, and would go on to be the Liberty Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1840, after losing favor with the Democrats for his stand on black suffrage. So, here's to Earle. The origins of the alliance between labor and the civil rights movement are further back in history than we usually believe, and Earle was one of the points of contact during the antebellum period.


[1] There were two votes on whether the suffrage should not differentiate between blacks and white: on the first, 8 voted against differentiation who also voted for the removal of the tax qualification, while only 5 did so on the second. 
[2] I love Thaddeus Stevens. And so should you. Not only was he a near constant vanguard advocate of far-reaching racial equality, he was accordingly "slandered" as Austin Stoneman, the Radical Republican leader (with a mulatto consort) in Birth of a Nation. His biographer describes him as "The Great Commoner, savior of free public education in Pennsylvania, national Republican leader in the struggles against slavery in the United States and intrepid mainstay of the attempt to secure racial justice for the freedmen during Reconstruction, the only member of the House of Representatives ever to have been known, as the 'dictator' of Congress." (Trefousse, Hans L. Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (1997) , p.xi). Personally, my favorite slander of Stevens came during his early career, as an Anti-Masonic delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1837-38: "the great unhinged of Adams county."

The only time I'll ever link to Bobby Jindal's webpage

Delegate Grymes, Louisiana State Constitutional Convention 1845:

"we may have an irruption of the inhabitants of Central Asia, of Affghanistan, and of the Hindoos; and if they cut down and fell our forests, without attempting to regulate our institutions, we will be fortunate indeed" (p.69)

Grymes is arguing against residence requirements for naturalized citizens before they can be eligible to be elected to public office. So, I link to Bobby Jindal, his official state site and his Wikipedia page. I disagree with Jindal on a range of issues (somewhere between 'every damn thing' and 'good lord, what is this man's problem'), but his election shuts up Grymes. (Yes, I know that death did that a long time ago, but this is the problem with living in the history.) Jindal was raised Hindu, converted to Catholicism, and is the first Indian-American governor in the United States. And it brings me a totally un-warranted pleasure to think that Voorhies would be aghast.

Reading the constitutional convention debates is fascinating; but with history being another country and all that jazz, I find it hard to be a partisan. That is, while it is very easy to find yourself repulsed by certain delegates (such as Grymes), and there is a definite attraction to other delegates, it is difficult to maintain these feelings across issue areas. This is largely because the ones defending (or even advancing) black suffrage are often the ones trying to impose restrictions on foreigners, or on poor whites. The lines of belonging parameterize the commitment to principle. There are some exceptions: Wisconsin in 1846 seems to be remarkable in that the people trying to expand the suffrage to blacks also want immigrant voting and are at the very least not rolling back white voting and are often loudly defending the unqualified right of the governed to vote, with at least some suggestions that this might include women. But generally, and to me surprisingly, finding heroes in the past is at least as difficult as finding them in the present--although villains abound in both.

Science fiction in Virginia...

.... or, an early chapter in the rise of Skynet.

From the Virginia State Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830:

"But I am told that Universal Suffrage, (I am no advocate for Universal Suffrage,) or more correctly General Suffrage, was the invention of the age of the Lord Protector Cromwell--that it sprung up for the first time, during the Commonwealth of England. It is called novel doctrine. Were it so, that would not prove it false. Steamboats are a novel invention, and many other useful arts are comparative novelties. The new race of men which modern science has created and made, is a new invention. I mean the wooden, brazen and iron men, which neither eat, drink, sleep, nor get tired; which are adults without being infants, full grown men as soon as born. These new men, these novelties, are likely to be a very useful race; for when inspired by steam, they are as rational as our black population. England has two hundred millions of them, and these United States have more than ten million of them. They are all revolutionists and will as certainly revolutionize the world as ever did the art of printing, or any conquering invader." --Delegate Campbell, p.388 

"Inspired by steam." The fantastic conquerings of human ingenuity, and of course, the so-deeply ingrained that it is almost background white supremacy.

Salt of the Earth

1954. The Union against the Bosses. The Mexicans against the Anglos. The Women against the Men. Excellent film, embedding three struggles for equality in the broader context of class conflict, with the labor movement being the necessary vehicle for the realization of racial, sexual, and class equality. But equality is not just some abstraction. The demand for equality is a means of achieving something with a bit more spleen to it: dignity. It is dignity that is the object of struggle.

Dignity is central to the film, and is perhaps best materialized in the radio Esperanza had urged Ramon to purchase ("installment plans, the curse of the working man"). 

The film was written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico, all of whom had been blacklisted for alleged communist politics. The film was bankrolled by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which had been kicked out the CIO in 1950 because it would not purge the communists from the leadership [1].


Two of the professional actors, Will Geer and Rosaura Revueltas, would be blacklisted by the studios for working on the film. Most of the actors were non-professionals from the community and the Mine, Mill local that had been at the center of the actual strike against Empire Zinc. From Wikipedia

The film was denounced by the United States House of Representatives for its communist sympathies, and the FBI investigated the film's financing. The American Legion called for a nation-wide boycott of the film. Film-processing labs were told not to work on Salt of the Earth and unionized projectionists were instructed not to show it.

After its opening night in New York City, the film languished for 10 years because all but 12 theaters in the country refused to screen it. By one journalist's account: "During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film's leading lady [Rosaura Revueltas] was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead....The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles."....  The Hollywood Reporter charged at the time that it was made "under direct orders of the Kremlin." Pauline Kael, who reviewed the film for Sight and Sound in 1954, said it was "as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years."

Watch the film and assess where, exactly, you see the communist propaganda. Here it is:

[1] It was, alongside Harry Bridges' International Longshore and Warehouse Union, one of the most racially progressive unions in the United States. So, of course, the CIO would try to break Mine, Mill by encouraging its white locals in the south to defect. Mine, Mill would eventually fold into the Steelworkers' union. 

Moderate White Supremacy

Haley Barbour has come under some fire for some comments--old and new--about race, the Citizens Council, and the Civil Rights movement. The most problematic of his recent statements was a suggestion that the Citizens Council movement was primarily targeted against the KKK, and helped maintain racial peace in Yazoo, Mississippi.[1]

You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.

Now it's true that the Citizens Councils didn't like the KKK, and they did organize against them. But the bulk of their activities were organized against the NAACP and other organizations that they saw as interfering in the noble southern traditions of apartheid and anxious assertions of racial supremacy. And all of their activities were aimed at preserving white supremacy, both in law and in community belief. Whereas Barbour sees them only fighting the Klan, and ignores them trying to keep the white community's boot on the neck of blacks, Matthew Yglesias has a more revealing take:

In Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s most white people were white supremacists. And within the large and powerful white supremacist community, there was a split between more moderate and more radical factions. The moderates pursued a strategy of economic coercion and the radicals pursued a strategy of violence. There was also a small minority of white proponents of racial equality. In Barbour’s home town of Yazoo City, Mississippi the moderate faction of white supremacists had the upper hand. And Barbour thinks the strength of moderate white supremacists helped create a beneficial political atmosphere in his hometown.

Hell we could call this triangulation, but really it's the classic strategy for those who want to achieve/maintain desired policies in an inhospitable climate. It is the same strategy employed by racial egalitarians in the Civil War/Reconstruction period, who sought to separate out a sphere of social equality from the spheres of political and civic equality. They recognized that they could only make gains in the latter if they forswore equality in the former.

From a 1965 NY Times article, a nice taste of this divide between moderates and extremists.

Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson made his strongest public statement against racial extremism, during an introductory speech for Senator James O. Eastland, who recently has been accussed by ultra-conservatives of 'going soft' on segregation. Referring to racial extremists, Governor Johnson said 'We're not going to be the pushing boy for that element ever again. We were not only the architects but helped build the dog house we now find ourselves in.'... Johnson, who won election on an uncompromising racist platform, asserted he would continue to fight for segregation, but through legal channels. 'Rather than accept the interpretation of laws by some bureaucrats,' he said, 'we prefer to go to the courts for their interpretation.'

I especially love that Johnson both ran on an uncompromising racist platform and still is able to refer to extremists as "that element." While the center of gravity has moved rightward on a whole series of issues, it has definitely moved to the liberal position on matters of race. 



[1] His watermelon comment is probably the most offensive in one way, but it's also weirdly ambiguous. On the one hand it is a classic racist trope. It was said, however, as a somewhat jocular warning to an aide who persisted in using racist language during an 1982 election campaign. It's possible that what upset Barbour about his aide's comments were that they were overheard. Of course, his own comments were also reported. Racist language and sentiment are a deeply ingrained part of the social and political discourse in many areas and communities of the country, south and non-south. Much of this is tied to actual policy positions, in the sense of not just believing blacks inferior and undesirable but in the belief that government and private power should be employed to sustain and strengthen white supremacy. But not all of it, and possibly not even most of it. Barbour's comments have always struck me as the latter: racist language, possibly reflecting underlying racist beliefs, but constrained by a belief in a citizenship regime that does not actively discriminate or sustain racial hierarchies. I felt similarly when Harry Reid's 'negro' comment came out. Certainly doesn't excuse it, and one should hold public officials especially to a standard in which the power of language and the reality of racism in government and society are recognized. But different than Trent Lott's comments that the country would have been better off had Strom Thurmond been elected President in 1948, which are really hard to understand except as an endorsement of public and private power being deployed to maintain white supremacy. Also, the fact that Barbour, in trying to upbraid an aide for racist language, couldn't help himself but to get in a racist joke, seems sufficiently sophomoric to raise broader questions about his judgment. But sophomoric has definitely been his M.O. throughout his career, and probably explains some of his electoral appeal.