Singing Potatoes
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Friday, 18 October 2002
Politics as usual
[...] that all efforts by abolitionists or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.

That language was contained in the platform for a particular political party between the years 1840 and 1856. Do you even need to guess which one?

Posted by godfrey (link)
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Comments
I'll take the most recent racism first, thanks; and since the South went Republican, they've cornered the market on egregious race-baiting, as witness the Willie Horton campaign of George H.W., or the "your job went to a minority" commercial of Jesse Helms.

Or are you making a reference to the Iraq war resolution, and how Democrats are going along with it? If so, the reference is specious, IMHO, since now BOTH parties are doin' the war thing, whereas in the Civil War only the Republicans were taking the principled stand against slavery.
Posted by Zach on 18 Oct 2002 21:18
Neither a reference to the Iraqi troubles nor an attempt to divert attention from current racism.

I've always found it interesting that the character of the two major parties (or at least the public perception thereof) seems to have shifted somewhat since their inceptions, but I was surprised to find that the Democrats had actually gone and defended slavery in writing for their first few politial platforms.

I'll have to disagree with the last phrase of your comment, though.

It's true that from their party's inception, many Republicans were pushing for the abolition of slavery (though at first, they only tried to have it banned in the territories, not in the states themselves); and Lincoln — the first Republican president — is probably best known for the Emancipation Proclamation (though it only freed slaves in those areas which were in rebellion; it was not a humanitarian move, but a punitive one).

But to state that "only the Republicans were taking a principled stand against slavery" is demonstrably false; a tiny minority of Democrats stood with them. Not a whole lot; the first congressional attempt to abolish slavery, undertaken during the Civil War, passed in the Senate 38-6, but failed in the House when only four Democrats voted in favor. But four Democrats did vote in favor.
Posted by Godfrey on 19 Oct 2002 07:40
I understand now. And you're correct, of course; I should not have said "only."

Good debate.
Posted by Zach on 20 Oct 2002 08:58