How Does It Feel To Own Slaves?
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner.
Americans seem more comfortable with comparisons to the 3rd Reich than to our own self reflection checkered history as Americans. Election 2020 is a sequel to the election of 1860. Slavery today has a different form but the same result, I’ve been there — done that … I truly have the tee shirt. Please don’t judge me good or bad, I beg us to try some calm honest inventory.
How did my great-great grandfather, the upper middle class owner of 20+ slaves / land / businesses in the 1860 southern USA … think, feel, believe about the political issues in the spring of 1860? My guess is he did not feel good about the Southern Democrats threat, actually extortion, to secede from the United States (become traitors) if a Republican Party representative was elected president. Why would a man and family with the “good life” want to shred normalcy? Let me be clear about me: I believe with mind, soul and spirit that slavery is cruel, inordinately inefficient / unuseful and morally wrong. And, from first hand information and all I can intuit, I don’t think my paternal ancestor was a “bad” person. I know from records he was religious and civic minded — a well regarded member of his community.
My 1860 grandfather in family lore was “good” to his slaves (the quotes designate a peculiar definition of good — he provided housing, healthcare, food, decent limits to hours worked and no physical abuse). My slave owning family story is common: Most if not all of the African American individuals “stayed” and worked as sharecroppers following emancipation and defeat of the Confederacy. I have met descendants. Flip the narrative. Where else would a “freed” slave rationally go? Some were interviewed by FDR New Deal correspondents in the 1930s, and (at least to the white woman interviewer) had no harsh words about my ancestors. Again, on the other hand, what was an 80 year old African American man going to say when approached by a government representative in 1930s American South?
The election of 1860 was negative, polarized, chaotic. No less than 4 candidates, all with diverse platforms. Some candidates were divisive and used fear, exaggeration, slanderous defamation and outright lies. “Slavery”, the institution, loomed over all. Lincoln received less than 40% of the vote — not a resounding endorsement by his base of who many were lukewarm that he was the “least bad choice”. Lincoln wisely morphed his platform from slavery vs. abolition to a broader question of states rights vs. federal jurisdiction. Feel metaphorically vaguely familiar?
OK, so what is the point? Providing universal healthcare, institutionalizing living wages, making skills training and education affordable, providing paths for deserving immigrants (with border control), reducing gun violence statistics and racism, delivering infrastructure for all … is creating a baseline of citizen fair chance. It isn’t “taking money away from rich and passing out unearned money to poor”. It’s the spirit of enlightened self interest that the highest beneficiaries invest in all American citizens to create the same shared baseline for a chance at life, liberty and pursuit of a better life. It’s Henry Ford voluntarily raising wages so his workers could buy his cars. Win-win, nothing could be more American.
Right now the situation is horrific. Critical. Horrible. Without a new deal, at least by my lights, a high percentage of America is in a paycheck to paycheck servitude of slavery with only a lotto chance for freedom. I’m luckily in good physical and financial health. I am reliving my great-great grandfather.
Anyone who has read this far probably thinks I am building toward an endorsement of a politic or candidate. Nope. No one wants me, I’m a reject from the spectrum of political passions. A “long form”, a Joe Rogan podcast wanna be. If we can find honest and civil discourse, respect and compromise … the “far right” and “far left” are both probably less radical than the middle (“better hot or cold, the lukewarm will be spewed from my mouth”).
I don’t want to believe my great-great grandfather was enthusiastic to perpetuate, let alone expand, slavery as an institution — it’s too “house-divided”, too much cognitive dissidence from the American ethos. I am willing to accept he was prejudice, racist, bigoted, self-indulgent, self-justifying and un-self-aware white male educated and land owning with over-bearing privilege. I am willing to accept these characteristics are true of me (conscious or unconscious).
But — I believe deep down my ancestors aligned with Lincoln’s argument in his 1860 Cooper Union speech that at least 21 of the original 39 founding fathers (53.8% is a “landslide” in a democracy) who signed the US Constitution were on the record in their belief that slavery was wrong and unaligned with the American aspirations and in conflict with “truths we hold self-evident”.
Assured healthcare, education, living wage and freedom from violence or prejudice due to race, creed, religion, gender or sexual orientation is the baseline of an equal rights starting point. America as a beacon representing an avenue for the aspiring among us all — as well as the immigrant fresh to our boundaries — is the minimum foundation that raises all our citizens above servitude. Period. How we get there is a matter of debate. Let us commit our hope, minds and actions that we can have some exorcism of our ghosts and conduct ourselves with civility, thoughtfulness, calmness and respect.
We have an opportunity to make history.
