|
|
Voice |
|
|
|
Any time historical accuracy and popular myth collide, truth will be the casualty. The public prefers to believe events took place the way that suits them rather than what actually happened. People had rather live with a comfortable version of an individual or an occurrence instead of an unpleasant fact. The eulogy Shakespeare had Marc Anthony speak over Julius Caesar’s grave could have been worded with more veracity. “The myth that people created lives after them,” ole Marc could have uttered. “The truth is oft interred with the bones.” Each year minorities and progressive people worldwide celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Most have never borrowed to read it. Few have looked at the document and at Lincoln in the historical significance of the time. Why worry about fact when the romantic version is more inspiring? To say the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves is incorrect, however popular it may be. But that’s not the first myth of American government. Thomas Jefferson started us on the truth versus myth battle with the Declaration of Independence. He is credited with the stirring words that proclaimed: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Beautiful words. It’s a shame Jefferson didn’t mean them. His definition of men meant those with white skin. Those with a darker complexion were excluded. Even the Constitution recognized slavery in allotting each state a proportionate share of representation based on those in bondage. While early political leaders such as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, among others, actively fought to abolish slavery, Jefferson supported it. Most historians accept that Jefferson did indeed have an affair with Sally Hemings. When Jefferson represented America in France, he was invited to join The Friends of the Blacks, which opposed slavery. He declined. The explanation he gave was, “Those whom I serve have never been in a position to lift up their voices against slavery . . . I am an American and a Virginian and, though I esteem your aims, I cannot affiliate myself with your association.” He even refused to support a resolution in the French assembly that would have given freedom to slaves in the West Indies. The story is that Sally Hemings was on French soil and legally free, where she could have stayed without the bonds of slavery. Whatever Jefferson promised her was enough to convince her to return to America with him and step back into bondage. Except for the interruption by New Englander John Adams as the second president, the Virginia Dynasty controlled the White House in the earl years of the republic and slavery was an ignored issue, except for a few dedicated abolitionists who did everything they could, legally and illegally to fight the specter of human bondage. Border states ran red with blood over the pro and anti slavery combatants. There were attempts and successes to prevent slavery coming into some of the newer states, especially in the Northwest. The concern was not to seek freedom for those of color in the slave states, but to prevent its expansion. That’s the political scene Abraham Lincoln came onto as the presidential election of 1961 opened. In his campaign, Lincoln was vocal in his opposition to the concept of slavery. Nowhere did he advocate beginning a war to free slaves. Nowhere did he even suggest he believe the black man was equal to the white man. The Civil War was generated from the opposition of the Southern States to oppressive tariffs and the concept that they had voluntarily come into a union and could, therefore, chose to leave it. Lincoln disagreed and by force of arms proceeded to end the secession by force of might. As much as some would like to believe, he never started a war to end slavery. He was a smart man and used every weapon he could to defeat the South. It was during that period the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, on January 1, 1863. It didn’t even go as far as the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson by stating all men are “equal.” The proclamation only freed slaves in those states “in rebellion.” Excluded were those in slave states that stayed in the Union, and in the City of Norfolk. The hope was to disrupt the Confederate cause and a desires to see the slaves rise in rebellion. After the Civil War, Lincoln invited a group of prominent black and former slaves to the White House. His proposal was to round up all blacks and ship them back to Africa. They were stunned. At one time, Africa had been their home. Uprooted and forced to acclimate to a strange land and culture, they were “Americanized.” For better or worse, this was their home. Presidents following Lincoln were more sensitive to racial injustice. Theodore Roosevelt is remembered for charging San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War, but a lesser known and more important contribution to the future was fighting lynch rule in the South and he invited prominent blacks to visit and dine at the White House—to the consternation of many Southern congressmen. Franklin D. Roosevelt brought the fight for equality a long way. Harry Truman desegregated the military. Earl Warren in Dwight Eisenhower’s administration struck down the separate but equal rule in public schools, even though Eisenhower disliked Warren. No president did better for minorities than Lyndon Johnson. His Civil Rights legislation did more than anything in American law to put ;morality into legislation. Yet Abraham Lincoln is honored for helping minorities. No less a publication than the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls him The Great Emancipator and credits him as the leader who brought about the emancipation of the slaves. Credit Lincoln as the president who preserved the Union with a war. Don’t celebrate him for being a Civil Rights advocate. But fact falls before myth—all the time.
|
