Following Donald Trump’s election victory, social media platforms were flooded with memes depicting the wailing and gnashing of teeth among Democrats bemoaning their loss. Some of these memes took a dig at the alleged historical predilection of Democrats for slavery. In a time when the subject of slavery is deemed to be so sensitive that the language police scold everyone on how to describe slaves—the new rule being that one must say “enslaved person” and not “slave”—it is ironic to see a subject that is usually treated with exaggerated solemnity and respect being subjected to derision and mirth under the guise of taking potshots at the Democrats.
The principle seems to be that we should not speak disrespectfully about slaves, unless the aim is to poke fun at Democrats. A typical rendition of this puerile humor is that “Democrats haven’t been this upset since Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves!” A t-shirt with Lincoln’s face emblazoned on it declares, “I haven’t seen the Democrats this mad since we took away their slaves!”—which is farcical to anyone who knows the real Lincoln had no desire to take away anyone’s slaves. The memes would not seem quite so witty if they read, “Democrats are upset at losing their enslaved persons!”
In the immigration debates, the Democrats’ opposition to mass deportation is also linked to a desire to keep slaves, provoking cheap shots about how hilarious it is that Democrats are wondering who will pick their cotton if their slaves are freed. Purveyors of this type of political foolery also link the Democratic Party to the KKK, with a play on the spelling as “DemoKKKratic” Party coupled with photographs of the KKK parading in New York waving the American flag. The premise of all this buffoonery is that today’s Democratic Party can be traced back in an unbroken line to the Democratic Party of the nineteenth century, and that today’s Democrats can therefore be criticized by reference to what their “predecessors” did in centuries past. Paul Gottfried captures very well the hypocrisy of Republicans who resort to nineteenth century analogies in an attempt to signal their virtue, pointing out that the Republican grasp of the political players in 1850 is completely wrong:
The social revolutionaries of the 1850s were not white Southerners but abolitionist Republicans, who in many cases expressed support for the violence against slaveowners unleashed by John Brown and his followers.
Please note that I am not defending human bondage any more than I am the violence committed by its more agitated opponents. But I find no honest reason to liken a conflict that took place 170 years ago to the one that is now raging between self-defined traditional Americans and cultural radicals. Republicans and authorized conservatives may be offering their comparison as virtue signaling, which is also why they extol Reconstruction, an unfortunate development that did nothing to further race relations or constitutional government in our country.
These “Republicans and authorized conservatives” seem not to be aware that their analogies are historically illiterate. There is no truth to the idea that the Democrats of the nineteenth century held any of the same beliefs and values as today’s Democrats. The lowbrow comedy about Democrats being defenders of slavery is a reference to Southern Democrats who were described as “the political heirs of Thomas Jefferson.” Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, but only those who know nothing about him would suggest that his main legacy is a defense of slavery. On the contrary, as Lew Rockwell explains, Jeffersonian concepts of individual rights and “states’ rights” are the key principles that inspired the secession of the Southern states:
That is why the political heirs of Thomas Jefferson, mid-19th-century Southern Democrats, held statewide political conventions (and popular votes) to decide whether or not they would continue to remain in the voluntary union of the Founding Fathers. Article 7 of the US Constitution explained that the states could join (or not join) the union according to votes taken at state political conventions by representatives of the people (not state legislatures) and, in keeping with the words of the Declaration, they also had a right to vote to secede from the government and create a new one.
The notion that those who voted to secede did so purely or primarily because they wanted to keep slaves—the subject of contemporary hilarity—is speculative at best. Although this is not the place to review that debate, readers may wish to consult Clyde Wilson’s article “Why The War Was Not About Slavery.” In trying to understand these historical events, some commentators have drawn a distinction between secession and war, arguing that although the war was not “about slavery,” nevertheless the decision to secede was motivated by slavery. Those who draw that distinction seek to emphasize that, regardless of the reasons for secession, it was not inevitable that war should result. While that distinction may be valuable in understanding the descent from political dispute to armed conflict, it remains the case that in the political debates surrounding both secession and war there is a wide overlap of principles and policies that are all important in understanding the values of Southern Democrats. Focusing exclusively on slavery would require one to ignore everything else ever said by Southern Democrats about independence and liberty, reducing them all to puppet figures whose only goal in life was maintaining slavery. Wilson observes:
Again and again I encounter people who say that the South Carolina secession ordinance mentions the defense of slavery and that one fact proves beyond argument that the war was caused by slavery. The first States to secede did mention a threat to slavery as a motive for secession. They also mentioned decades of economic exploitation and the seizure of the common government for the first time ever by a sectional party declaredly hostile to the Southern States. Were they to be a permanently exploited minority, they asked? This was significant to people who knew that their fathers and grandfathers had founded the Union for the protection and benefit of ALL the States.
Thus, for example, in his famous “Cornerstone Speech” that many people associate only with a defense of slavery, Alexander Stephens begins by discussing the importance of the Constitution:
This new constitution, or form of government, constitutes the subject to which your attention will be partly invited. In reference to it, I make this first general remark: it amply secures all our ancient rights, franchises, and liberties. All the great principles of Magna Charta are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers under the laws of the land. The great principle of religious liberty, which was the honor and pride of the old constitution, is still maintained and secured. All the essentials of the old constitution, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American people, have been preserved and perpetuated.
This preoccupation with the Constitution is the hallmark of the Jeffersonian Democrat. Charley Reese explains the values of the Jeffersonian Democrat:
And what, you might well ask, is a Jeffersonian Democrat? He’s a person who hasn’t forgotten that the sovereign states created the federal government, not the reverse, as some today seem to assume. He believes that what the Constitution created was a republic of sovereign states, and that the carefully limited powers assigned to the federal government were all the powers it had, in peace or in war. He believes the Constitution is a binding contract, not a rubbery document that can mean anything a judge or a politician says it means. He believes in a system of checks and balances. In short, he believes in the Declaration of Independence.
While cardboard cutout historical characters may lend themselves more readily to jokes and memes, the obsession with slavery ignores many other important features of the relationship between North and South, including the long-stated desire in South Carolina and New England to decouple their states from each other. The thinly-veiled contempt of New England puritans for South Carolina conservatives was reflected, for example, in the exaggerated political reactions to the infamous altercation between Preston Brooks and Charles Sumner. Michael Martin observes that contemporary analysts attempted to link this dispute to the eventual outbreak of war, although he points out that, “In reality, Sumner’s speech [in which he slandered South Carolina for five days straight] probably created more division than Brooks’ caning.”
The same antagonism can also be seen in the Northern secession movement discussed by Tom DiLorenzo, highlighting the sentiment expressed by Massachusetts, when she contemplated seceding in 1803, that, “A Northern confederacy would unite congenial characters, and present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the Southern States, having a similarity of habits, might be left to manage their affairs in their own way.” Senator James Hillhouse of Connecticut said at the time that, “The Eastern States must and will dissolve the Union and form a separate government.” Senator Timothy Pickering from Massachusetts thought, “The people of the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West.”
This brief overview illustrates that a tunnel-vision focus on slavery as the only issue (or the main issue) worth studying in understanding political history obscures many other events essential to understanding the era. Depicting Southern Democrats as men whose only concern in life was to avoid Republicans taking away their slaves is simplistic and juvenile. It impedes the efforts to acquire a better understanding of who Southern Democrats were, and erases from public view their deep commitment to Jeffersonian ideals. Of these men, Reese concludes:
So to add to the definition of Jeffersonian Democrats, they were a majority of the Founding Fathers, a majority who fought the American Revolution, a majority who wrote the Constitution, and a majority who fought for Southern independence. No wonder the precious few still extant make big-government lovers so nervous.
