Phoenix-Like
After the end of the Civil War there were, for a time, various African-American members of congress elected from the Reconstruction-era South. But then came the “redeemer” governments using a combination of a terrorist violence and state coercion to institute an apartheid system and for a while black elected officials departed from the federal government. On January 21, 1901 George Henry White, the last of these Reconstruction-era members of congress, said:
This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress but let me say Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are on behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people. . . . The only apology I have for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness, and manhood suffrage for one-eighth of the entire population of the United States.
In a few hours, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as President of the United States. It’s clear that our problems are far from solved, but also clear that Rep. White’s faith in the promise of America was justified.
33 Responses to “Phoenix-Like”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 20th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Reconstruction strikes me as a truly remarkable time. For a brief decade, the U.S. was the most radically progressive nation on earth (at least in terms of govt. policy).
I suppose you could say the same thing about the decade after the Declaration of Independence, although the French Revolution may have displaced it for a little while.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I’m sure Myles or Gekko will come in here shortly to let us know that the racist Democrats ruling the south 100 years ago makes the Southern Strategy ok.
Just getting that out of the way since it always comes up on this topic.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Dude, that guy must have been pissed.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Am I the only one who thinks it might have better, at the end of the Civil War, to have malice for a few more, and charity for fewer?
It’s like Olberman said last night – we didn’t excise the rot entirely, and it just festered and grew worse.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:48 am
RE “But then came the “redeemer” governments using a combination of a terrorist violence and state coercion”
————-
Er.. in the South they’re remembered as “freedom fighters” and “resistance movements”.
Which is bullshit, of course. Read the Southern newspapers of the era and you’ll see a racism as vile as the Nazis.
But the situation was far more complex than Matthew admits. My ancestors on my father’s side lived in the Eastern Kentucky area of Appalachia and fought a vicious guerrilla war with the Confederacy — although sometimes “guerrilla war” appears to have been a good excuse to rob banks, steal cattle, and pay off old scores.
But on the other side of the Border, several Virginia counties were placed under martial law by the Confederacy because of support for the Union forces. Although much of this was resistance to the draft — mountain men saw no reason why they should risk their lives and make their wives/children into impoverished widows/orphans in order to protect the property (slaves) of a Tidewater aristocracy which had always screwed Piedmont and mountain Virginia at every chance it got. When I was young, my great-uncle showed me a cave where Virginia men hid from the Confederate draft gangs. On my mother’s side — in eastern Virginia — there’s a family history of an ancestor who hide in an underground bunker to evade Confederate draft gangs in order to provide for his family.
The Real story of the Confederacy was how a small group of wealthy men were able to use their wealth, political power, and control of the newspaper to create a vicious racism that was idiotic –that bought disaster down upon the working class and middle class that died trying to protect it. The carnage in the Confederate Army was enormous — and yet only 1 out of 3 Confederate soldiers had the wealth to own even one slave.
The Radical Republicans of the North had their own economic agenda as well. Slavery made a nice propaganda weapon for economic imperialism –for men wanting to build national empires in steel,coal and railroads and who wanted immunity from the demands of state legislatures.
To some extent, Southern racism became virulent because Southern blacks came to be seen as collaborators with an occupational army and a predatory political machine imposed from the North. But much of this was also deceitful propaganda stirred up a resentful Southern elite that was beaten but not subdued.
Much of America’s fight with racism over the past 140 years could have been avoided if the Union Army had exterminated the Southern elite. By leaving that job unfinished, the Union government left a bitter, unbroken class alive to plot, convive and kill. Just as the failure to kill off the German elite at the end of WWI left them free to form the Nazi movement and support Adolf Hitler .
January 20th, 2009 at 9:50 am
I sometimes wonder if U.S. Grant’s reputation as an ineffectual if not failed president is due to him being supportive of Reconstruction. Clearly, Confederate General Longstreet’s reputation took a dive once he came out as pro-Reconstruction and(to give Myles and Gekko their due) Republican.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:51 am
PS The moral –re how Obama should deal with the Republican remmant of today — is, I trust, sufficiently clear.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Also, pace the poster above, the 30 years following the Civil war were NOT a time of progressive government.
Having concentrated power into a throughly corrupt government in Washington DC, the Republicans made slaves of everyone else. Child labor. Grinding poverty. The people in Appalachia had to fight a guerrilla war to throw off a modern day feudal system imposed from here in Philadephia.
The progressive movement did not come until much later — and in reaction to the government of Grant’s successors. In 1877, The Republicans in Washington certainly did not hesitate to sell Southern blacks down the river at the first opportunity.
Reminds me — I need to go down to the Westmoreland Coal Company building and piss on it some night.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Re: For a brief decade, the U.S. was the most radically progressive nation on earth (at least in terms of govt. policy).
Dubious. Haiti was a country actually ruled by black people at the time. Although I’m not sure how progressive or revolutionary the regime was by the 1860s- it had certainly started out as quite revolutionary though. Mexico also had a full-blooded Indian president, of progressive inclination, at the time, and I’m sure there were some other countries in the LA region under progressive governments.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Uh, just so we’re clear, I wasn’t actually going as far as Don Williams. A little less malice than the extermination of the Southern aristocracy would be fine by me.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Agreed with Joe and Don on reconciliation. You can’t work with these wackos. You can only defeat them, or be defeated.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Re Don Williams
I see that Mr. Williams has removed the bag from his head after Sundays’ football game and is back to being the blogs’ resident Bolshevik.
Much of America’s fight with racism over the past 140 years could have been avoided if the Union Army had exterminated the Southern elite. By leaving that job unfinished, the Union government left a bitter, unbroken class alive to plot, convive and kill. Just as the failure to kill off the German elite at the end of WWI left them free to form the Nazi movement and support Adolf Hitler .
Gee, sounds like Israel and Hamas.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Regarding Reconstruction: It was progressive, and it wasn’t. It saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which outlawed slavery, made slaves citizens, and gave them the right to vote. At the same time that such things were happening, the US was engaging in ethnic cleansing on the frontier in order to further the interests of wealthy industrialists and poor yeoman farmers. Quite an interesting paradox.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:26 am
“PS The moral –re how Obama should deal with the Republican remmant of today — is, I trust, sufficiently clear.”
Hrmmm. Someone didn’t get the memo on pacifism.
Speaking of which, what about the new American President’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan?
January 20th, 2009 at 11:31 am
“Dubious. Haiti was a country actually ruled by black people at the time. Although I’m not sure how progressive or revolutionary the regime was by the 1860s- it had certainly started out as quite revolutionary though. Mexico also had a full-blooded Indian president, of progressive inclination, at the time, and I’m sure there were some other countries in the LA region under progressive governments.”
Indeed, Hector. Because the extent of Progressivism, and any other philosophy, is measured by the color of skin and racial/ethnic origin of those who hold power.
January 20th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Speaking of which, what about the new American President’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan?
Should have happened years ago, and would have, if Chimp Boy hadn’t had a Really Big Idea That Couldn’t Possibly Go Wrong.
January 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Reconstruction ends in 1876 when the Southern states are given back full statehood. The period from 1865-1876 marks EVERY progressive bit of legislation in the South. It really makes you question the intrinsic value of self-sovereignty.
Then again, since Johnson and Grant blocked any kind of land reform, the plantation owners who started the war merely became landlords (and eventually, agribusiness corporations), maintaining the same tyrannical oligarchy that survives today. Since they went unpunished, these traitors never gave up their ideals, which not only survive today but also formed the dominant ideology of federal government from 1968 until this very day.
The South has had a single-party system since the foundation of the colonies. To paraphrase one of them, if we’d just tried them for treason we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years.
The heartless question is, was the Civil War worth it for the ratification of Amendments 13-15? Those wouldn’t pass TODAY if the South were included on voting.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
re: “most progressive nation on Earth”
It’s arguable that the United States has been the most progressive nation on Earth for longer than the above posters seem to deem it. We mostly remember Jacksonian America as a kind of caricature today, viewing it only in light of the approaching Civil War and with a perfunctory nod to the Trail of Tears. But that’s not a great way to do history, not if you want to really get into the heart of the past.
We often forget that in the 1820s, 30s, 40s, and beyond, the US had — for all of its restrictions — the most radically democratic franchise in the world. True, it was only for white men; and while it varied by state, many and/or most (I can’t recall right now) places practiced universal white male sufferage. That was simply unbelievable in that age. Travellers from Britain, itself the most liberal state in Europe, were almost universally shocked by the radical democratic egalitarianism of American society. One English gentrywoman reported her shock when she knocked on the door of a wealthy house in one of the Massachusetts port towns, and was informed after a conversation with the maid that American working people did not consider themselves “servants” and that they did not have “masters.” This is the era when the old Dutch Yorker term “boss” became prominent.
The interaction between a member of an ancien regime society and the brash young democracy made for a work like _Democracy_in_America_.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
also, contra Luke, Reconstruction ends in 1877. Same year as the first great labor revolt.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Agricola Pauper,
Well, if you’re extending the time period to the Jackson era, you could argue that Paraguay during that time period was certainly further left than America:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Gaspar_Rodr%C3%ADguez_de_Francia
January 20th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
The problem with Reconstruction is that it was always going to be temporary, and no one planned for what to do after it was over.
Most liberals seem to feel that we could have avoided a lot of racial problems had Reconstruction been undertaken with more force, or if we had simply not ended Reconstruction.
This is ridiculous. Part of the reason for the backlash racism after Reconstruction ended was because it had been undertaken in such a way as to humiliate Southern whites, and they wanted revenge. A harsher Reconstruction would have exacerbated that, unless somehow blacks were put into complete political control of the South (which to be permanent would require the ethnic cleansing or genocide of most of the white population). Moreover, to extend the period under which martial law would be practiced would simply be impractical. To keep Federal Troops in the South for 30, 40 years – it couldn’t happen.
A far better solution would have been to have granted blacks civil rights in a way that would be less galling to whites – specifically, the right of the black man to vote should have been upheld, AND AT THE SAME TIME no white person should have lost their vote for belonging to the Confederacy. The Federal government should have made certain that state legislatures had more power to deal with business issues (e.g. carpetbaggers) so that the South did not feel that its prerogatives in terms of economic regulation, etc. were being usurped by the Federal government.
Most importantly, when feasible it should have been set up so that to get anything done, white politicians would have to allu themselves with black politicians in the state government. Putting people in situations where they had to work together, and where their interests were in common, would, I think, have forced a greater level of cooperation, even if the old racial attitudes remained.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
I’m normally inclined to agree with Glaivester here, and aware that any argument that basically boils down to “they should have been more brutal/prosecuted with more force” to be a poor one. But if there is any exception it has to be the Post Civil War South. And in my admittedly cursory reading of the literature, it seems that those voices advocating such a protocol most vigorously were not the “radical republicans” on the eastern seaboard but non-confederate/anti-confederate southerners.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:26 am
What political party did these black Congressional Reps belong to?
January 21st, 2009 at 8:27 am
But if there is any exception it has to be the Post Civil War South.
Why do I have a feeling that if the Post Civil War Southerners had been Arabs, Asian, or anything other than white people, you would not feel this way?
January 21st, 2009 at 10:23 am
I hate feeding trolls.
Glaivester, can we agree that the biggest problem in the post-Reconstruction South is that the heads of Confederate states were allowed to become governors and senators? So it’s (in many cases) literally the same guy who just fought a war to defend chattel slavery now “protecting” the rights of (to him) livestock.
So, regardless of ideology, it’s insane to expect anything different from these people who had just tried to secede. Therefore a solution must be found to keep them out of office.
Solution A is charge them with treason. Solution B is to divy up their plantations amongst the slaves that built them. Solution C is to remove voting rights.
So, when we say we wanted Reconstruction to “go further” we mean we wanted A or B. Or even to mean “not look the other way as massive populations are re-disenfranchised”.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:44 pm
cialis
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:39 am
levitraIf you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
tramadol
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
April 14th, 2009 at 10:37 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
viagra