Last week, Bob McDonnell, the newly elected Governor of Virginia, published a proclamation naming April as Confederate History Month. In the proclamation , he cites the bravery and sacrifices made by the Confederate soldiers who fought for four years. The purpose of this was to increase interest in one of the darker periods of our nations’ history in order to increase tourism to the state, especially as Virginia (just like every other state) struggles with a budget shortfall due to the down economy. However, the Governor did not expect the reaction of the proclamation by a small segment of society.

McDonnell quickly came under fire because he did not include a statement against slavery – one of the issues associatedwith the Civil War. The Governor apologized for the reaction to his oversight and quickly amended the proclamation . Unfortunately, the damage was done, and now the topic of slavery and the Confederacy has resurfaced all over the news. While most of these discussions are merely highlighting how far we have come as a nation, some irresponsible commentators have “jumped the shark” (as the saying goes).

The worst argument surrounding this issue questions if the Confederate soldiers domestic terrorists.  This is the argument being made by Roland Martin over at CNN.  In his piece over at CNN.com, Martin states:

When you make the argument that the South was angry with the North for “invading” its “homeland,” Osama bin Laden has said the same about U.S. soldiers being on Arab soil. He has objected to our bases in Saudi Arabia, and that’s one of the reasons he has launched his jihad against us. Is there really that much of a difference between him and the Confederates? Same language; same cause; same effect.

If a Confederate soldier was merely doing his job in defending his homeland, honor and heritage, what are we to say about young Muslim radicals who say the exact same thing as their rationale for strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing up cafes and buildings?

If the Sons of Confederate Veterans use as a talking point the vicious manner in which people in the South were treated by the North, doesn’t that sound exactly like the Taliban saying they want to kill Americans for the slaughter of innocent people in Afghanistan?

Defenders of the Confederacy say that innocent people were killed in the Civil War; hasn’t the same argument been presented by Muslim radicals in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places where the U.S. has tangled with terrorists?

We can’t on the one hand justify the actions of Confederates as being their duty as valiant men of the South, and then condemn the Muslim extremists who want to see Americans die a brutal death. These men are held up as honorable by their brethren, so why do Americans see them as different from our homegrown terrorists?

This is an interesting argument in the sense of what defines a domestic terrorist. The Code of Federal Regulations defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” This definition is vague on purpose, since the concept of domestic terrorism (as we know it today) is new to the government. The same definition could be used to define any aspect of war, including rebellions.

In my opinion, the Confederate soldiers were not terrorists. If we think back to the time of the Civil War, the armies of the North and South both used the Napoleonic fighting style where their forces would organize in lines to face off in open-field combat. This form of “civilized” combat placed soldier against soldier, rather than attacking innocent civilians. Ironically enough, it was the change in strategy by the North that brought the battle to civilian populations. When the Union forces could not achieve military victory head-on against the Confederates, they turned to attacking the supply lines and support infrastructure of the Southern army. It was only after this point that support for the war started to decline in the South and helped lead to the surrender of the Confederate Army.

To refer to these actions as the same of Islamic terrorists shows how short-sighted or biased Roland Martin is when it comes to the Civil War. I can go into the complexities that lead up to the Civil War, and how ending slavery was not the main goal when war broke out, but that would be a whole other discussion. But to compare Confederate forces to Islamic terrorists would be like comparing the Girl Scouts to the Hitler Youth. It’s not only silly, but it is a poor attempt at rewriting history to meet a personal agenda.

Reading through the news today, I cam across the following quotes from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, “slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.” If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said “slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.” When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.”

There are four points that I want to cover with this: slavery, women, civil rights, and rush to action.

Slavery:  It is interesting that Reid starts his argument by saying “there were those who dug in their heels” in regards to recognizing the wrongs of slavery. He is trying to imply that it was the Republican’s who favored slavery and attempted to bar the abolishment of the practice. However, truth be told, it was the Democratic Party that supported the practice leading up to the Civil War. Democratic President James Buchanan sided with the Supreme Court on the Dred Scott Decision and the pro-slavery Southern Democrat movement pushed to expand slavery into the Kansas Territory. The anti-slavery camp, known as the newly-formed Republican Party, was bolstered by the support of Northern Democrats who were afraid of the surge of the Southern Democratic power, resulting in the sweeping victory of Abraham Lincoln in the Northern states in 1860.

Women:  This is another interesting reference point. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the 19th Amendment on January 8th. On January 9th, the Republican-lead House of Representatives passed the Amendment, though the Democrat-led Senate delayed the vote until October, and then voted against it. It wasn’t until June 1919 that the Senate finally passed the Amendment, with the now Republican-led Senate passing the Amendment 56 to 25, with 75% of Republicans and 42% of Democrats voting in favor. So far, Reid is two-for-two with endorsements of the Republicans.

Civil Rights:  A century after the civil war, when the nation fought against itself over issues to include slavery, the nation found itself fighting over the equality of men, or in this case, blacks. While the North continued to be more favorable towards racial issues, the South continued the tradition of elevating one race over another. The tides were changing in the 1960s, however, and a strong movement was growing in Congress to outlaw segregation bring voting equality to all. In 1964, the Congress voted on the Civil Rights Act, passing with 70% or more in both Houses. The Southern Democrats fought against passage, but in the end 69% of Senate Democrats and 63% of House Democrats voted in favor of the Act. This was trumped by Republican support, with 82% of Senate Republicans and 80% of House Republicans voting in favor.

In the three examples cited by Reid, the Republicans are shown to be not only necessary for passing major legislation, but also led the cause. I doubt that Reid doesn’t know this history, so I can only guess that he was attempting to somehow cast their involvement in a negative light as to deflect the public attentions to this fact. But Reid makes one other error in his rant on the Senate floor. His constant repeating of “slow down, stop everything, let’s start over” mirrors the comments made by Congressional Democrats during the lead-up to the Iraq war. In fact, Senator John Kerry accused Bush of “rushing to war without a plan to win the peace.”

So, if Kerry was right that we should not rush into decisions, how can Reid be correct with his rush to a conclusion on the Health Care Reform debate? Maybe Reid is four-times wrong in one floor speech.

I started writing this article about the Senate resolution to apologize for slavery in the United States. The past tense is used since, while reading various articles on the topic, I came across a sentence that just stood out. In the Washington Post article “Senate Backs Apology for Slavery,” Carol M. Swain of Vanderbilt University said something that bothered me. To quote the article:

Even among proponents of a congressional apology, reaction to yesterday’s vote was mixed. Carol M. Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University who had pushed for the Bush administration to issue an apology, called the Democratic-controlled Senate’s resolution “meaningless” since the party and federal government are led by a black president and black voters are closely aligned with the Democratic party.

“The Republican Party needed to do it,” Swain said. “It would have shed that racist scab on the party.”

This is something that has bothered me for such a long time. Why is it that the Republicans get such a bad rap in regards to racism? A simple look into history shows roll the Democrats play in not only prolonging racism in the country, but also delaying the progression towards equal rights. Let us walk through the history real quick and see how things have evolved. From the establishment of our country through the Civil War, slavery was legal. It was even an integral part of our Constitution. The argument over slavery progressed from our founding fathers (who owned slaves but argued against the practice) up through the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Stephen Douglas, a Democrat, was less a proponent on slavery as he was a proponent for allowing people to vote for or against slavery. This unique position was evident in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, where the residents of the territories could determine if their position as a free or slave state when they entered the union. This act (and slavery in general) became the core topic of debate between Lincoln and Douglas four years later. Even though the two men were campaigning for the same Senate seat (where Douglas, the incumbent, won), the debates were followed on the national level. The Whigs, and eventually the Republicans, were taking the position that slavery should not be allowed to expand across the nation. Becoming the face and voice for that position, Lincoln cemented his popular support in the Northern states as well as in the West, defeating Douglas by 500,000 votes in the Presidential election just two years later.

As we know, the nation fell into Civil War under Lincoln’s watch. Two years after becoming President and fighting the largest war in the nations’ history, Lincoln issued two executive orders that became to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation. These orders proclaimed that slaves in the Confederate states (starting in 1863) would be freed. In 1864, Lyman Trumbull (Republican, Senate Judiciary Committee), with co-authors Charles Sumner (Republican) and John Brooks Henderson (Democrat) submitted an amendment proposal to abolish slavery. This amendment was adopted in 1865, becoming the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the death of Lincoln, the Republican Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 expanding and protecting the freedom of blacks in America. The freedoms and protection of blacks were later cemented into the Constitution when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868. This Amendment, primarily written by John Bingham (Republican), declared that:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Fast forward 100 years, we find the nation debating racism in the South. Despite the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Jim Crow laws continued to spread in the South leading to the segregation of the black and white populations. For years both Republican and Democratic legislators worked to draft a civil rights package that would override the abuses by Southern Democrats in the core former Confederate states. In the early 1960, the Republicans introduced a handful of bills into committee that would later be incorporated into the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When the act reached the floor of the House and Senate, a higher percentage of Republican (80% in the House, 82% in the Senate) politicians voted for the passage of the Act than the Democrats (61% in the House, 69% in the Senate).

So why is racism the “scab” of the Republicans, especially after all that they have done on behalf of blacks within our country? Why isn’t it the “scab” of the Democrats fought against the rights of blacks, stemming from Douglas’s unwilling to stand up against the practice to Senator Robert Byrd’s marathon filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Is it merely the fact that the Dixiecrats broke away from the national Democratic organization and joined with the “states’ rights” side of the Republicans in the second half of the 20th century? Or are people simply uneducated when it comes to racism in our nations’ history?

Whatever it may be, it is beyond time that people mature and accept people for who they are. People cannot choose what skin color they are born with, nor does skin color make you better or lesser than the person next to you. As the Declaration of Independence states, “all men are created equal.” Both political parties have much to apologize for over the years, as does the Federal government itself. It is my hope that this bill is the last chapter on the issue of racism in our nation, and that we can move forward as one.

Related articles:
BellaOnline – “Democrats and Racism”
World Socialist Web Site – “The Republican Party and racism: from the ‘southern strategy’ to Bush”
U.S. Constitution Online – “Constitutional Topic: Slavery”
Teaching American History – “The Constitution and Slavery”
New Visions Commentary – “Bill Bradley Fouls the Civil Rights Act”
The Dirksen Congressional Center – “Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964″