A History of the Republican Party: Part 1

in his inaugural address he says you know you guys are all hot under the collar about the slavery thing and by

the way I’m paraphrasing he says but no but don’t worry because you don’t have to worry because this whole issue right

now is sitting in front of the Supreme Court and they’re gonna fix it and I like all good Americans will defer

to what every day decide to do well within a week the Supreme Court hands down the

Dred Scott decision and the Dred Scott decision gives the southern large

planters everything they want it declares that the Missouri Compromise is

unconstitutional it declares that african-americans have no rights that a white man is bound to respect as Chief

Justice Roger tawny puts in his in his majority opinion everybody writes an

opinion by the way for this particular case and tawny who had until this week had a statue in

Baltimore which is where he’s from now won’t no longer a statue in Baltimore I went down this week Toni says this and

it also says something crucial it says that Congress cannot legislate in the

territories what this means of course is that Congress cannot do things like

prohibit slavery it has to leave territorial government up to the people who live there and as I said under that

protection of property what this means is that if in slavers bring their enslaved people into all this new

western territory not just the land that people are fighting about with the Missouri Compromise Act which only

covers I’m sorry with the kansas-nebraska Act which only covers the Louisiana Purchase but also everything else under that America has

taken under the Treaty of Guadalupe dalgo the whole rest of the southwest Congress can’t do anything there except

leave it up to popular sovereignty and as I said under popular sovereignty if even one person brings us enslaved

people into that land it’s going to have to be slaves to a slave state and that

of course is going to mean that the northern states are going to be overawed in the House of Representatives as well

as in the Senate and America is going to become an enslaved enslaving the nation

entirely not just in the south all right so what happens people go ballistic over the Dred Scott decision because it looks

like James Buchanan has been in on it and historians now know yes he was he pressured northern Democrats to go along

with this decision because he wanted it to look like it was not a sectional decision so going into this on

this is 57 and now in 58 we have another discussion in Congress about slavery and

this and what’s happening in Kansas and this comes from South Carolina senator named James Henry Hammond then you know

he appears a lot in my work because James Henry Hammond is kind of a poster child for how really awful the large

southern slavers are he is just a horrible man his diaries exist if you want to read them he is vile on about

his enslaved people who he treats appallingly and raping them and killing

them and assaulting them but he’s also vile about women he’s very clear that women aren’t either sexual playthings

for men or are there to bring in their their money it’s how he rises in the world is fine

marrying a rich woman whom he didn’t proceeds to abused um anyway he ends up being thrown out of Congress for a long

time because he raped his four nieces and was furious at them for ruining his political career but it didn’t road his

political career that much in that society because he gets put back into Congress in the late 1850s and when that

happens he gives his speech about what’s happening in Kansas and he says you know I’m not really paying that close attention what’s happening in Kansas

because I trust my friends to do the right things because you know we’re kind of the best people and we know how

things work but but while we’re talking about this let’s just let’s just talk

about how society should work because you northerners talk a lot about

equality and that’s just wrong I mean and James Henry had actually written a letter that we have sang you know

Jefferson Davis was completely wrong I’m sorry Thomas Jefferson was completely wrong there is no such thing as people

being equal but of course people aren’t equal people like James Henry Hammond are far better than the others and he

says you know really the way society works is it is you know most people are

dull they’re they’re not very smart they can’t plan for themselves they’re really kind of like you know the mud

sills of a building the the the beams that you hammer into the dirt in order

to support the greater stuff above them and by the way until fairly recently

in Illinois they still use the word saloons for for lower class white people

people who were driven into the mud siller’s she said they’re really the mud cell and every society has them and

they’re loyal and they’re hard-working and they got muscle but they’re you know basically just want to dance and and you

know eat and they’re not they’re not thinkers they’re gonna stay where they are there’s nothing you can do for them

but we above them we are the ones who move society forward so what you really need to do is get those people at the

bottom to produce a lot and then to take what they produce and to consolidate it

up with us because we’re the ones with the education and the connections and who know how to run things and you have

to give it you you have to give us the power and the control to do that because

if you actually give those people to bottom a voice they’re going to you know taking atom and what they’re producing

they’re gonna they’re gonna demand a redistribution of wealth and when that happens we’re not going to be able to

accumulate stuff and we’re not gonna be able to sit around and think great thoughts we’re gonna have to work and if we have to work we’re not going to be

able to to to move society forward so you need to preserve this new idea this

this idea of mud cellars and those of us on the top being able to move things forward because this is really the way

society moves best and I’m gonna look ahead a little bit here and tell you that is precisely what Andrew Stevens

says Alexander Stevens says in his cornerstone speech about the foundation of the Confederacy he doesn’t say we’re

going back to an old world he says we’re mounting a new world that’s gonna take over the entire globe we’re gonna be the

center of this new slave based society well this is 1858 Abraham Lincoln is

listening to all of us and he’s gotten involved in politics by 1856 and he’s listening to this and he’s saying wait a

minute you James Henry Hammond who’s famous for raping your nieces and who’s

never done a lick of work in your life and this is where you are because you you married into it you’re better than

me who’s and and he doesn’t say this I’m putting words in his mouth who’s

obviously brilliant who has worked my way from nothing and who is now you know

this this famous in an increasingly famous railroad lawyer and speaker and you

would have me have stayed in my father’s fields chopping wood my whole life and

just using my muscles which by the way as soon as he made to went into politics is a log splitter but the minute he

didn’t have to swing an axe any longer he didn’t do um you wouldn’t you think that I should be at the bottom and you

should be on top not happening and he gives this really important speech in 1859 and in this 1859 speech at the

Milwaukee Agricultural Fair he says no no there are people who think that society works best when all the money

sits at the top and they’re the ones who can move society forward but those of us

who believe in free labor believe something different we believe that society works best when government

doesn’t work for the very wealthy moving money upwards but rather works to preserve equality of opportunity because

if you preserve equality of opportunity for people at the bottom if you make sure they have access to resources and

access to education they are the innovators in the world and if you remember Abraham Lincoln is our only

president who holds a patent on something he was an innovator I’m an inventor I’m they’re the ones are gonna

innovate they’re the ones who are gonna use their ideas best they’re the ones who are gonna work hard they’re the ones who are going to come up with new ideas

and use their money and really exciting ways and they’re gonna produce more than they can consume and they are in turn

going to support a level of people above them who are going to be merchants and are going to come up with new ideas in

terms of factories and they’re kind of going to to to invent new things and

they in turn might support a few financiers but they’re going to hire beginners just

starting out and what this is going to do is it’s going to create not this world that the Southern Democrats are

holding on to where a few people have everything and everybody else has nothing this binary world of haves and

have-nots what we see is a world where if the government puts its weight into the

people at the bottom they’re going to create an updraft of prosperity that is

going to create prosperity across the country for everybody a sort of circle

if you will a web of interaction that is to lift all boats although he doesn’t

say that but it’s an interesting thing because as I mentioned before the reason his early store fails is because the

river sells him and none of the people in the town really can do enough to dig that river out and he realizes early on

if only the government had come and dug out the river which they could not do his early town would have survived

he believes governments should be helping people like him by doing things that they can’t do like dredging rivers

and building roads and putting their energies into education and helping people at the bottom so they in turn can

produce enough to move things upward through society this is the principle on

which the Republican Party goes in front of the country in 1860 and they say if

you turn the government over to us we are no longer going to use it to consolidate wealth among a few very

wealthy people who are enslaving other human beings we will use it to help people at the bottom regular Americans

who are trying to have equality of opportunity my point I want to make here as I talk about this is that the early

Republican Party is not out there talking about freeing the enslaved people they believe that enslavement

should be left in the south where it’s protected by the Constitution but they don’t talk about ending it that’s going

to come during the war what they’re talking about in 1860 is a new kind of government that helps people at the

bottom rather than helping people at the very top and in the election of 1860 the

Democratic Party splits dramatically between the people who believe in concentrating wealth at the top and a

number of northern Democrats who rally behind Stephen Douglas the same one who started this whole problem in 1854

behind Stephen Douglas who and who say you know we don’t really like the idea of concentrating wealth we would like to

move away from the slave power the Democratic Party actually splits in two and when that happens there’s also

another party that rises I want to tell you about when that happens the extreme southern Democrats organizing the deep

south most of the rest of the Democrats organized in the north of the middle of the country and they split their vote

and Abraham Lincoln wins the election 86 1860 by a plurality of the vote

slightly less than 40% of the American vote and therefore takes this concept of

free labor the idea that this new Republican party needs to protect equality of opportunity into the White

House with that so much material and so

many more great stories I could tell you I’ve hit an hour and I’m gonna leave that here now and next week pick up and

I’m gonna do this to begin the stuff I really like which is the Civil War and

and possibly its aftermath thank you very much I hope this was useful if it

was I’ll see you next Thursday to continue with the history of the Republican Party and as always I will do

the Tuesday 4:00 o’clock sessions on the relationship between history and modern

politics and who knows what next week’s gonna bring thanks a lot for being here

I’ll see you next week

Abraham Lincoln: Definition of Liberty (or Tyranny)

Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland [1]

April 18, 1864

Ladies and Gentlemen—Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we can not fail to note that the world moves. Looking upon these many people, assembled here, to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago, the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore. The change from then till now, is both great, and gratifying. Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it.

But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore. The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to-day. Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected—how much needs not now to be recounted. So true is it that man proposes, and God disposes.

But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’sPage  302 labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated.

It is not very becoming for one in my position to make speeches at great length; but there is another subject upon which I feel that I ought to say a word. A painful rumor, true I fear, has reached us of the massacre, by the rebel forces, at Fort Pillow, in the West end of Tennessee, on the Mississippi river, of some three hundred colored soldiers and white officers, who had just been overpowered by their assailants. [2] There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the government is doing it’s duty to the colored soldier, and to the service, at this point. At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought, I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the christian world, to history, and on my final account to God. Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier. The difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically applying it. It is a mistake to suppose the government is indiffe[re]nt to this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it. We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or white officer commanding colored soldiers, has been massacred by the rebels when made a prisoner. We fear it, believe it, I may say, but we do not know it. To take the life of one of their prisoners, on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel a mistake. We are having the Fort-Pillow affair thoroughlyPage  303 investigated; and such investigation will probably show conclusively how the truth is. If, after all that has been said, it shall turn out that there has been no massacre at Fort-Pillow, it will be almost safe to say there has been none, and will be none elsewhere. If there has been the massacre of three hundred there, or even the tenth part of three hundred, it will be conclusively proved; and being so proved, the retribution shall as surely come. It will be matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed case, it must come.

Annotation

[1]   AD, The Rosenbach Company, Philadelphia and New York. A preliminary draft (infra) of the opening paragraph of this address is preserved in the Lincoln Papers.

[2]   See Lincoln’s communication to cabinet members and note, May 3, infra

What Does ‘White Freedom’ Really Mean?

It is among the ironies of American history that both the opponents and the defenders of hierarchy cast their views, and their struggles, in terms of freedom and liberty.

Would-be settlers coveting Native lands spoke of their “inalienable rights” to claim Indigenous territories; Southern secessionists maintained that theirs was a fight to “secure the blessings of peace and liberty”; and in the 20th century, apologists for segregation framed federal action against it as an attack on the freedom of Americans to do as they please.

“Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South,” Gov. George Wallace of Alabama declared in 1963 in his now infamous Inaugural Address. “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny.”

It is tempting, and easy, to condemn these people as disingenuous and hypocritical, to dismiss their cries for freedom as the hollow rhetoric of self-interested elites. And there are, no doubt, good reasons to take that view. But in a recent book, Tyler Stovall — an award-winning historian of France who died last week at the age of 67 — asks us to consider the idea that to its defenders, hierarchy is a matter of freedom and liberty, and to think about what this means for the concepts themselves.

Specifically, it means that we should think of freedom in at least two ways: a freedom from domination and a freedom to dominate. In “White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea,” Stovall shows how both are tied up in the history of race and racial thinking. In societies like those of the United States and republican France, he writes, “belief in freedom, specifically one’s entitlement to freedom, was a key component of white supremacy.” The more white one was, he continues, “the more free one was.”

This “white freedom” is not named as such because it is somehow intrinsic to people of European descent, but because it took its shape under conditions of explicit racial hierarchy, where colonialism and chattel slavery made clear who was free and who was not. For the men who dominated, this informed their view of what freedom was. Or, as the historian Edmund Morgan famously observed nearly 50 years ago in “American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia,” “The presence of men and women who were, in law at least, almost totally subject to the will of other men gave to those in control of them an immediate experience of what it could mean to be at the mercy of a tyrant.”

As an ideology, Stovall writes, white freedom meant both “control of one’s destiny” and the freedom to dominate and exclude. And the two moved hand in hand through the modern era, he argues, both here and abroad. In the United States during the early 19th century, for example, the right to vote became even more entangled with race than it had been. “Not only was suffrage extended to virtually all white men by the eve of the Civil War, thus breaking down traditional restrictions based on property and class, it was also and at the same time increasingly denied to those who were not white men,” Stovall writes. “The early years of America as a free and independent nation were thus a period when voting was more and more defined in racial terms.”

After the Civil War, as liberalism began its march through the global order, racial distinctions within polities became more, not less, salient. That was especially true after the forced end of Reconstruction. “The rise of white manhood suffrage along with Black disenfranchisement in the United States exemplified this theme, as did the coterminous expansion of liberal democracy and authoritarian colonial rule in Britain and France,” Stovall contends. “As freedom became increasingly central to white masculine identity in Europe and America, as it increasingly belonged not to elites but to the masses of white people, it seemingly had to be denied to those who were not white.”

Of course, there have always been competing visions of freedom: freedom separate from race hierarchy and freedoms that do not rest on domination. In the 20th century, especially, anticolonial movements within European empires and the struggle for civil rights in America posed what Stovall calls a “frontal challenge to the racialization of liberty.”

If, as Stovall argues, “liberty and whiteness have been mutually reinforcing” throughout Western history and if “racial distinctions have played a key role in modern ideas of freedom,” then the task of all those who seek a more inclusive and egalitarian freedom has been to challenge the hierarchies that have shaped and structured “freedom” as we understand it — along with the material realities that undergird and reinforce them.

What makes Stovall’s work so valuable at this moment, and what makes his death such a heavy loss, is that his study of “white freedom” helps illuminate the stakes of the present and the ongoing struggle over the meaning of American democracy. It is a fight, for some, to be free (or at least more free) of domination and hierarchy, and a fight, for others, to be free to dominate on the basis of those hierarchies.

In April 1864, as the Senate moved to approve the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, Abraham Lincoln spoke to a crowd in Baltimore about this question of freedom, liberty and democracy. “We all declare for liberty,” he said, “but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.” With some, he continued, “the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor, while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.”

The circumstances of today are vastly different from those of the Civil War, but if Lincoln’s words continue to resonate, it is because the basic shape of the conflict remains much the same. Here is Lincoln again, in the same speech, with a parable that cuts to the heart of the matter. “The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty,” he said. “Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, and all professing to love liberty.”

We all want freedom. The question is what we each want to do, for ourselves or to others, with it.

Friends in High Places

Bill Clinton golfing in 2000 with Vernon Jordan. They had a fondness for talking about women.

Credit…U.S. PGA Tour Archive, via Getty Images

 

WASHINGTON — When you are the president’s best friend, you may be called on for many services — some dicey, some soothing, some world-shaking, and some profoundly personal.

In his new book, “First Friends,” Gary Ginsberg chronicles the unelected yet undeniably powerful people who shape presidencies.

We know too well how the advisers of presidents with all-access passes to the Oval can make or break legacies.

Look at how George W. Bush’s presidency was ruined when Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld got him to invade Iraq.

And consider how Rudy Giuliani ginned up Donald Trump’s craziest impulses, leading to two impeachments, one insurrection and endless legal bills.

But there has been less focus on the often “unseen hands,” as Ginsberg calls them, the BFFs busy on the sidelines.

He became interested in the topic as a lawyer vetting vice-presidential candidates for Bill Clinton. He was joined in the last round by Harry McPherson, an old Washington hand who has been the White House lawyer for Lyndon Johnson.

McPherson believed that if L.B.J., a solitary man at heart, had had an intimate, he might have navigated Vietnam more adroitly. So McPherson wanted to know, “Does Al Gore have any friends?”

When Gore stumbled over the answer, McPherson wondered, “If he can’t develop or even claim one real friendship, how’s he going to lead a nation?”

But Clinton didn’t seem to care; he had enough friends for both of them.

Ginsberg examines First Friends in nine presidencies and the impact of the back-room counsel. His tales include:

Bill Clinton dispatching Vernon Jordan to talk Hillary Clinton out of leaving him after he publicly confessed to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

John F. Kennedy and David Ormsby-Gore at the White House in 1961.

Credit…Bob Schutz/Associated Press

David Ormsby-Gore, the British ambassador and an old friend of Jack Kennedy, helping to guide Kennedy through the Cuban Missile Crisis and signing a nuclear test ban treaty.

Bebe Rebozo relaxing the coiled and paranoid Richard Nixon by mixing martinis, making steak and Cuban black-bean dinners and paying to put a bowling alley in the White House basement.

Eddie Jacobson, an Army buddy and partner of Harry Truman in a Kansas City haberdashery, helping persuade Truman to recognize the state of Israel.

Edward House serving as a de facto chief diplomat for Woodrow Wilson, negotiating the World War I armistice and the doomed Treaty of Versailles, until Edith Wilson came along and dismissed him as “a perfect jellyfish.”

Presidents can put their friends in awkward circumstances. Nixon asked Rebozo to help him with a shadowy fund-raising scheme, and Clinton got Jordan — the two loved to talk about women — involved in trying to get Lewinsky a cushy job at Revlon in New York, before that scandal exploded.

Credit…Corbis, via Getty Images

And sometimes the friends put the presidents in a bad light. “By the late 1960s,” Ginsberg writes, “F.B.I. agents investigating criminal syndicates had identified Rebozo as a ‘nonmember associate of organized crime figures’ … The F.B.I. now had reason to believe the Key Biscayne lots Nixon had purchased were owned by a business associate of Rebozo’s connected to organized crime.”

First Friends trade interesting gifts. When Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, he kept in touch with James Madison with presents marking current obsessions.

“Jefferson mostly sent books about political philosophy, European governments, and failed democracies, as well as contraptions like a telescope that retracted into a cane, phosphoretic matches, a pedometer, and a box of chemicals to further indulge Madison’s growing interest in chemistry,” Ginsberg writes. Madison sent sugar maples, Pippin apples, and pecans, but was unable to procure a live opossum.

Abraham Lincoln and his friend Joshua Speed, a Springfield, Ill., shopkeeper, had a rare intimacy. The two shared Speed’s bed for years in Springfield after Lincoln told Speed he couldn’t afford a mattress. Historians still debate the nature of this relationship.

But when Speed moved back to the family farm in Kentucky and said he did not want to surrender his right to own human property, Lincoln wrote him bluntly about his disappointment.

“You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it,” Lincoln chided, urging Speed to think of those “poor creatures hunted down” and “carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils.”

Other friends specialized in sycophancy. As Pat Nixon said of Rebozo, “Bebe is like a sponge; he soaks up whatever Dick says and never makes any comments. Dick loves that.”

Citing the example of Donald Trump, “the friendless president,” Ginsberg told me that leaders need that emotional engagement of knowing that there is another soul who has their interest at heart.

I asked Ted Kaufman, the longtime loyal pal of Joe Biden, who nursed him through Beau’s passing, what it means to be a First Friend.

“I’d walk across cut glass for him,” he replied, “and I think he’d do the same for me.”