Is That Legal?

Thanks for calling this little spat out for what it is, Eric. Both sides should have been above such posturing.

'It doesn't make sense to convert the perpetrators of this violence into an amorphous "white elite," nor is it right to leave the crucial roles of Daniels, Aycock, et al. out of this official piece of evidence now added to the historical record.'

In one sense, she is completely right, of course - it wasn't an 'amorphous "white elite"' - it was the white elite who wanted to retain power, using any method at its disposal to remain in power, employing a time tested and well proven one. The same way that the Jesse Helms did, roughly 90 years later, when running against Harvey B. Gantt, the first black mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. From wikipedia -
'Helms would employ race in future elections, as in 1990, when he ran the famous "Hands" television ad in a tough reelection race. The ad has become legendary in Southern political circles as the most direct appeal to white backlash in modern American politics. It showed rough white hands opening a letter, and then crumpling it and throwing it away, while the voice over talked about how much the white man needed the job, and how it went to a less qualified black man because of affirmative action.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms#Controversies

Sadly, there seems to be no way to comment on the weblog of this 'important update.'

She obviously has some good points, but I'm not sure that political affiliation is more important than the reality of race in politics in many parts of America. And quite honestly, I am sure that the Republican Jesse Helms would have felt perfectly at home cooperating with the older segregationist Democrats - 'Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of "Dixie" on a Capitol elevator.' Or 'While working on the 1950 campaign of Republican Willis Smith against Democrat Frank Porter Graham, Helms helped create an ad that read "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races."'

And that last example was before Nixon's sourthern strategy. No, I don't think 'amorphous' is quite the word for much of that southern white elite. Let's just call them racists, and consider the D or R after their names more along the lines of a footnote. One which should not be left out, of course, but it is still a footnote. In a land as notably lacking historical awareness as America, her dedication to historical truth is admirable.

And somehow suspect, especially with her quoting Tim Tyson's writings in the N&O earlier this year summarizing the report of the Wilmington Commission - 'Though promising to restore something traditional, they would, in fact, create a new social order rooted in white supremacy and commercial domination.' A new social order in a former slave state rooted 'in white supremacy and commercial domination'? What part of white supremacy and commercial domination was newer in 1898 than in 1848, when North Carolina was electing Whigs to office?

CYA:

Comments are enabled on my site. I don't know why it didn't seem so for you.

I stand by the position that the legislative "acknowledgment" should have been specific. The record is very clear about what it meant to be a Democrat in 1898. (You are correct that Jesse Helms would have been one.)

Historians, Tim Tyson among others, offer compelling evidence that yes there was a new, harsher social order that emerged after Reconstruction to make the distinctions between black and white even more severe than, in some ways, they were under slavery.

Thank you for the reply. As I don't use images, cookies, or javascript on the Internet, there may have been a link which didn't appear in the text alone, even after looking twice.

In full recognition that North Carolina is not South Carolina, the laws and practices concerning slaves in South Carolina were definitely harsher pre-Civil War than afterwards. Discovered in a bit of reading prompted by one of Thurmond's relatives pointing out, in a hopefully not untruthful paraphrase, that everyone of class and taste in South Caroline used to be a slaveowner, so why the big deal about it?

I think human misery is essentially impossible to measure in quantifiable terms, so comparing 1838 to 1898 will likely remain more at the level of discussion and opinion, however, it remains my firm conviction that a society with even well treated slaves is one that requires change, even if the formerly well treated slaves find themselves in a worse situation. Because no slave society is ever composed of merely well treated slaves, regardless of the propaganda. Or in the words of my own state's now 'emeritus' (Virginia has always been proud of its academic leanings) state song (approved in 1940), 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginny' -

'There's where the old darke'ys heart am long'd to go,
There's where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.

---

'Massa and missis have long gone before me,
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.'

Amazingly, this may lend some support to your thesis - a song written in 1875 by an African American became Virginia's state song in 1940, including a stanza with a slave looking forward to dying to again be with his beloved massa and missis.

And from http://www.virginia.gov/song/history.html - 'Because of continuing controversy about the song's outdated and racially charged lyrics, the 1997 Virginia General Assembly designated "Carry Me Back" as Virginia's "state song emeritus" and thereby essentially relegated it to history.'

In other words, that slaves were happy to be slaves in Virginia is now essentially relegated to history. How convenient. And quite honestly, the party affiliation of those who thought in 1940 that having Viginia's state song refer to 'darkies' three times remains a footnote in my eyes - the fact they were racists is much more important to hammer across, especially when the state government site remarks 'As a practical matter, though, the state had not had a state song for more than twenty years, since "Carry Me Back" had rarely been played at public events.' Yes, in 1977, the state song was getting a bit embarassing to sing along to. The fact that it took 2 more decades after the song essentially disappeared from public is easily explained by Virginia's conservative nature, of course. Or the fact that it was ruled by a white elite.

Change happens, of course - Douglas Wilder was the first black governor of a southern state since Reconstruction. However, I can imagine that during his term, he was able to listen to the state's official song at least once. And who knows? If it was played, likely it was done in full recognition of the respect and admiration for the person holding the office of governor at that time.

Setting apart the question of whether slaves were "well treated" or if the very idea is a contradiction . . . one huge difference is that when you are owned by another human being, you have very little power. In theory, that situation changed after the war. The fact that the slaves were freed and could participate in the political system is what makes the crucial difference between the periods you are talking about. Prior to the war slaves weren't murdered in wholesale numbers, the way they were in Wilmington, Carrollton, Miss., and Colfax, La., because the under slavery they lacked the power to play the white man's ultimate game: politics. The new tactics that became necessary to keep blacks out of positions of influence (the framework of Jim Crow) is what Tyson and others mean by the "new social order."

Before the Civil War, no one in the South felt that destroying another man's property was respectable, or somehow not worthy of punishment or at least recompense to the property owner. This apart from the sort of punishment an abolitionist would receive.

Afterwards, when slaves lost their value as property, it no longer mattered much to those interested in the rule of law as it pertained to property.

This isn't quite the same as saying life in 1830 was better or worse for slaves than life in 1880 for ex-slaves.

We will likely just disagree here. That the South of 1880 was possibly even more savage than the South of 1830 is another discussion - including the huge suffering caused by the Civil War, the first truly modern industrial war, though a one-sided one.

Nonetheless, it is not possible for me to find the lot of freed slaves worse than that of slaves, even if a quantitative argument is possible. For example, those ex-slaves which moved to the north with increasing industrialization would not have been allowed to decide to leave for Chicago or Detroit or St. Louis if slavery was still legal - as shown in one of the Supreme Court's most disturbing decisions in Dred Scott - unless their master had directed them to do so, where they would still retain their status as slaves.

America's history in regards to slaves and Indians is both extremely complicated, and extremely shameful. That we may emphasize different parts of that shameful history is not the same as disagreeing about it, I think.

As an added note - this is a somewhat limited discussion in a way. Much of the United States never had any involvement in slavery, and discussing what happened in a minority of states retains a touch of the insular, which tends to color some of my perspective as time goes on. But in those states where slavery was practiced, truth is often a challenge - Virginia's 'emeritus' state song, retired in 1997, for example.