Civil War Politics
It might be proper to look at the politics during the Civil War here in America to see how the High Officials handled their duties, especially the legal aspects. I am transcribing another section of Morrison's history to see if the Prisons maintained by the North and the South lived up to the vaunted American ideals:-
>>>>1. Internal Politics, North and South
Lincoln wielded a greater power throughout the war than any other President of the United States prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt; a wider authority than any British ruler between Cromwell and Churchill. Contemporary accusations against him of tyranny and despotism read strangely to those who know his character, but not to students of his administration. Lincoln came near to being the ideal tyrant of whom Plato dreamed, yet nonetheless he was a dictator from the standpoint of American constitutional law. Jefferson Davis is open to the same charge. And on both sides there were many men of high standing who preferred to risk defeat at the hands of the enemy rather than submit to arbitrary government.
At the beginning of the war, Lincoln as commander in chief of the army and navy called for enlistments not yet sanctioned by Congress, declared a blockade, and suspended the writ of habeas corpus in parts of Maryland. The first assumption of power was quickly made legal by Congress and the second by the Supreme Court; but Chief Justice Taney protested in vain against executive suspension of the famous writ (ex parte Merryman}. Lincoln refused to indulge a meticulous reverence for the Constitution when the Union was crumbling. As he put it in his message of 4 July 1861, "Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" But the power he asserted was grossly abused by some army officers. A loyal mayor of Baltimore, suspected of Southern sympathies, was arrested and confined in a fortress for over a year; a Maryland judge who had charged a grand jury to inquire into illegal acts of government officials was set upon by a provost marshal's guard while his court was in session, beaten, dragged bleeding from the bench, and imprisoned for six months; and there were many like incidents.
Simultaneously with the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln issued an order that seemed to deny white citizens the liberty that he proposed to accord to Negro slaves. He proclaimed that all persons resisting the draft, discouraging enlistment, or "guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels" would be subject to martial law, tried by the military, and denied the writ of habeas corpus. Under this proclamation, over 13,000 persons were arrested and confined by military authority, for offenses ranging from theft of government property to treason. Earlier in 1862, and only a few days after he had denounced Lincoln's tyranny, President Davis obtained from his congress the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and promptly did so in Richmond and other places, where equally arbitrary and unjust proceedings occurred.
Undoubtedly the provocation was great, especially in the North, where opposition to the war was open, organized, and active. For instance, the Laconia (New Hampshire) Democrat attacked Lincoln and the war with a virulence equal to that of the most rabid Southern newspaper. This journal urged that Democratic Northern states combine with the Southern, toss out Lincoln with the Constitution, and adopt that of the Confederacy, "rather than submit to have the country divided and ruined to carry out the . . . selfrighteous nigger abstractions of a set of ignorant and hypocritical fanatics of New England." A religious sect, the Osgoodites, regarded the Lincoln administration as the Beast of the Book of Revelation, and sang a hymn beginning, "The Lincoln party made the war, we know."
One of the most delicate and difficult subjects with which both presidents had to deal was the peace movement. Many sincere people on both sides believed that the Union could be restored, or Southern independence established, by negotiation; that only the obstinacy of Lincoln or the ambition of Davis stood in the way of peace. The "copperheads," as the Northern defeatists were called, held a mass meeting in Lincoln's home town on 17 June 1863, which resolved "that a further offensive prosecution of this war tends to subvert the Constitution and the Government." In North Carolina over 100 peace meetings were held within two months after Gettysburg, to promote negotiations for reunion. On both sides the defeatists organized secret societies. In the Middle West "Knights of the Golden Circle" harassed loyal households by midnight raids and barn-burnings; in the South "Heroes of America" gave aid and comfort to the Union. Neither government made any systematic effort to suppress these organizations: they were too formidable. In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where treason flourished side by side with the most stalwart loyalty, General Burnside attempted repression in 1863 with slight success. In a general order he declared, "The habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed in this department." For violating this order in a campaign speech, the most prominent copperhead, Clement L. Vallandigham, was arrested, tried by a military tribunal, and sentenced to ^ confinement for the duration of the war. Lincoln humorously altered the ^sentence to banishment within the military lines of the Confederacy, whither Vallandigham was escorted in May 1863-1 But it took more than that to
silence Vallandigham. After assuring Jefferson Davis that if the South could hold out another year the Northern Democrats "would sweep the Lincoln dynasty out of political existence," he made his way to Canada, received in absentia the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio, conducted a peace campaign from Canadian soil, and returned in time to draft the defeatist plank in the Democratic platform of 1864.
After the war was over the Supreme Court took cognizance of a case of arbitrary arrest and court-martial (ex parte Milligan), and declared that neither the Constitution nor any stretch of the President's war powers sanctioned the military trial of a civilian in districts where civil courts were open. This decision came too late to help anybody. Yet, on the whole, defeatists, conscientious objectors, the hostile press, and violent critics of the government, fared better under the Lincoln regime than under those of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Throughout the Civil War active disloyalty was effectively dealt with wherever it raised its head; but there was no general censorship of the press, no "relocation" of suspects; and discussion of leaders and war aims remained open, unrestrained and often ill-informed, libelous, and nasty. Sentences of courts-martial were comparatively mild, and offenders were pardoned with the coming of peace.
In the Confederacy there were no organized political parties, but Vice President Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia came very close to an opposition leader. Endowed with a superior mind, Stephens made several wise statements about the war; but in his loyalty to political abstractions he resembled John Randolph of Roanoke, and his thin body, falsetto voice, and waspish speech suggested that he suffered under a similar disability. Stephens hated the war, hated Davis, and hated Richmond, so much so that he absented himself for 18 months from his official post as president of the senate. Stephens conducted a campaign against the government for subverting the liberty it was supposed to protect, and encouraged state governors to resist conscription. This sniping campaign was directed by Linton Stephens, a member of the Georgia house of representatives, who went so far as to write to his brother in October 1863 that President Davis was "a little conceited, hypocritical, sniveling, canting, malicious, ambitious, dogged knave and fool." The Stephenses worked hand-in-glove with Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, who obstructed the Confederate conscription laws in many ways and by 1864 had brought his state to a mental condition akin to open revolt. Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, the original secessionist, even planned a convention of the states to depose Davis.
Governor Zebulon B. Vance of North Carolina was another sharp thorn in Davis's side. He not only withheld troops from the Confederate service but did his best to retain for the North Carolina regiments all the uniforms manufactured in his state, and to take the pick of all supplies that entered Wilmington through the blockade. He had a bitter controversy with Davis over C.S.S. Tallahassee, a converted blockade runner which slipped in and
out of Wilmington in 1864 to destroy merchant vessels. On one of her visits to her home port, the captain of Tallahassee filled his bunkers with steam coal which Vance wanted for a state-owned blockade runner. Vance accused Davis of hamstringing operations which would have relieved his people of their misery, in order to fuel a Confederate raider that only destroyed "a few smacks." Davis, when the Confederacy was on its last legs, had to report this silly controversy to the Confederate congress, and explain that the "insignificant smacks" were forty-six ships, nineteen of them square-rigged.
General Bragg, a few other Confederate commanders, and the governor of Texas, declared martial law in 1862, but President Davis revoked these orders as unwarranted assumptions of power. Nevertheless provost marshals infested the South, demanding passports, credentials, and loyalty oaths from all who excited their attention or suspicion. A more general subject of Southern discontent was the impressment of supplies for the army by the commissary department, when farmers refused to sell for Confederate money. This practice stripped many a Southern farm of corn and livestock; then Sherman's "bummers" came along and took the poultry too.
In the face of frequent, acrid, and unreasonable attacks, Davis maintained an admirable patience. He could be acid and querulous when commenting on Union acts and policies; but to his own people, no matter how great the provocation, he was always the high-minded, courteous gentleman.
1 Vallandigham's declaration that "he did not want to belong to the United States" prompted Edward Everett Hale to write The Man Without a Country. This piece of fiction, which appeared in the Atlantic in December 1863, was widely republished, and did more to stimulate patriotism than any other wartime writing.<<<
You did not find Andersonville or other Southern Military Prisons discussed here, or equally squalid prisons maintained by the Union Armies. We will leave that research up to you.
14 Senators owe an apology
** 14 senators owe nation an apology ** Thursday, June 16, 2005 Sam Fulwood III *Plain Dealer Columnist* Better late than never, the Senate apologized Monday for its disgraceful history of doing nothing to stop the lynching of black Americans. The Senate resolution expresses "the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens . . . ." Who can argue with that? Well, 14 conservative Republicans did. The Foolish Fourteen are Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch of Utah; Thad Cochran and Trent Lott of Mississippi; John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; Michael Enzi and Craig Thomas of Wyoming; Chuck Grassley of Iowa; Judd Gregg and John Sununu of New Hampshire; Jon Kyl of Arizona; and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Though they didn't explain their failure to sign on, their cowardly inaction shouted resistance and opposition. They preferred to look the other way, just as their forebears did while black Americans were being lynched with impunity. Sen. Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, and Sen. George Allen, Republican of Virginia, pleaded personally with their colleagues to support the resolution. They hoped for 100 signatures. But the legislation arrived on the floor with just 80. The resolution was never in danger of failing. It passed under "unanimous consent," a procedure that doesn't require all of the senators to be present or to vote. After the resolution passed, other members quietly added their names to the list of co-sponsors. One of them was Ohio Sen. "Clueless George" Voinovich. Marcie Ridgway, Voinovich's press secretary, said the senator supported the legislation. But she struggled to explain why the senator wasn't among the original co-sponsors. First, she said, Voinovich didn't know about the anti-lynching legislation, even though it was on the docket for weeks. Then she said he was never asked to co-sign it, a fact contradicted by resolution supporters, who said they visited Senate offices to make the request. Finally, Ridgway said Voinovich wanted to vote during roll call, but wasn't allowed to do so. No, he wasn't, because Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist refused repeated requests to allow it to come up on the floor. Frist, Republican of Tennessee, was covering for GOP senators who didn't want their names attached to a vote on the only apology the Senate has ever offered to black Americans. The resolution makes clear what they were apologizing for: At least 4,742 people - most of them black men - were reported lynched in this country between 1882 and 1968. Nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced into Congress over the past century, but only three passed, and then only in the House of Representatives. Seven presidents, from Benjamin Harrison in 1890 to Harry Truman in 1952, petitioned Congress to outlaw lynching. In the past, the Senate looked away at every turn. On Monday, the Foolish Fourteen clung to that racist legacy. Mark Planning, chief counsel for The Committee For A Formal Apology, an organization that lobbied for the Senate resolution, said the senators knew exactly what they were doing by refusing to sign the resolution. "This was an absolute no-brainer," said Planning. "It was an act of active resistance for any senator not to be a part of this." To reach this Plain Dealer columnist: sfulwood@plaind.com, 216-999-5250 © 2005 The Plain Dealer © 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved. <<<<<<
Sam gave you a heavy load there, and I don't see how anyone who grew up on the Civil Rights Struggle, or watched "To Kill a Mockingbird" can help but sympathize with the victims of these terrible tragedies. But you can see the 14 not as perpetrators, but as idealogues. If your grandpappy had been a Southern Lawmaker or even one of the Rebels, you would have a right to hold up family honor. Which brings us back to Terrorism of the Union Armies during the Civil War, and some of the atrocities they committed, in the name of rooting out the Rebs (read insurgents). In the past, American ladies organized the DAR to help mend the torn fabric of the nation, by pointing out that your ancestor, like mine, was a member of the Army of the Revolution, and should have your respect, no matter which side your people were on, during the 'late' war. I don't believe any of the 14 are 'racists' anymore than I am, but as an earlier article on these pages showed, you have to be 'politically correct' to avoid being branded as one, perceptions matter, ask Trent Lott. I do think he might have gone along with the other Republicans to mend fences, after all he was once their Leader when Clinton was President. Read the article above over again to see if makes more sense. I give George Voinovich credit, but then he didn't have a Grandpappy who was a Reb.
Sectarianism and Secularism
I had to go to the encyclopedia and dictionary for this one. Actually Sectarianism is really belief that a given sect is pre-eminent, which is what each of the other sects also believe, and in truth is what happened when man built the Tower of Babel. Have we not learned a thing in the past 3000 plus years? Now to the sources
The acknowledgment of religion or religiousness as valid
Traditional justifications
Religion as pointing to an ultimate power, being, or value
More generally, persons who are outside the particular religions and who have nevertheless acknowledged religion as significant often seem to base their views on a fundamental feeling of absolute dependence. The grandeur of the universe, the character of the moral struggle, reflections on human nature, and an awareness of moral values inspiring men to reform society have all joined together to point men to an ultimate power or being —a "power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," according to the 19th-century English poet Matthew Arnold.
The fundamental difference in the latter part of the 20th century between the secularist and the religious person most likely has been between someone who takes a narrower and someone who takes a wider view of humanity. That there is an acknowledged need in modern times to give a moral direction to technology seems to many to bring with it the need for a religious view of the universe, even though they may not themselves be adherents of a particular religion. From EB 2003
And to the Jun 13 edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer "Crushed between the bureaucrats and the theocrats>>>>
by CRISPIN SARTWELL
Recently I was interviewed by a filmmaker who's working on a documentary about American philosophy. He asked me the big, hard, obscure questions about the nature of the American spirit, about the great themes of American history, about what makes America distinctive.
I have tried to answer such questions before. But this time, as I ran through them, I was seized with nostalgia for the mere existence of questions: The idea of America is more and more retrospective, a survey of something of great value, now lost to history.
The first thing we might think about is the content of American mythology, which has its basis in reality: a celebration of the frontier where there is no structure of authority; of the outlaw; of Clint Eastwood's man with no name; of the gangster from Al Capone to Snoop Dogg; of political radicals such as Emma Goldman, H.L. Mencken, Abby Hoffman and Barry Goldwater; of pointedly distinctive artists from Robert Johnson and Hank Williams to Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol.
But as time goes on, we have fewer and fewer figures capable of real boldness or defiance or self-reliance: We worship bureaucracies and their leaders, bureaucracies and their products. Our frontier is the cubicle.
Surely, we have to understand the vision of America — its imaginary essence, its function as a symbol — in terms of individuality and freedom. The radical Protestants who fled England and Europe believed that each person had his own relation to God, unmediated by the Catholic Church or the government of England. Each person was answerable to God only as God expressed Himself in that person's conscience.
This is the motivation for the First Amendment, with its insulation of individual conscience, expression and religion from state interference. This radical religiosity and the idea that it entailed radical liberty were the position of abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown.
This independence of spirit from institution was secularized in the work of the greatest American intellectuals of the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his best friend Henry David Thoreau. As Thoreau asked in "Civil Disobedience. Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”
The individualism that Emerson famousiy set out in the essay "Self-Reliance" — perhaps the greatest statement of what America means — is not an individualism that tries to disconnect people from one another or from the world: It's quite the reverse. It celebrates the life of each thing as essential in the life of all things. But that entails that each person ought to be free to become himself.
There are two opposing forces between which this America has been crushed. We might call them quasi-communism and quasi-fascism. (Actual communism and fascism would require more clarity than most of us now possess.)
The social programs that grew exponentially with the New Deal — and the huge bureaucracies needed to fund and administer them — are almost self-evidently good: feed the poor, house the homeless, care for the elderly, eliminate bad products from the marketplace, ensure our health. But of course, they are destructive of self-reliance. And they permeate America with state power.
Americans are now processed by state educational institutions into a fundamental unanimity that revolves around the simultaneous muttering of cliches: Even "believe in yourself is an invitation to witless conformity; even reading "Civil Disobedience" — a text no American educator could possibly accept — is rendered empty by its institutionalization. Our devotion is only to standardized tests and standardized minds.
That's the quasi-communism. The quasi-fascism was brought home to me last Week when I revisited my hometown, Washington, D.C. It was bristling with barriers, cameras, security forces. The capitol must be the most surveilled and policed city in the world. To call that the symbol of human freedom is laughable.
At every turn — from its Patriot Act to its overwhelming propensity to secrecy to its use of the term "homeland"— the Bush administration is intent on reducing freedoms and increasing state power. Even its theocratic wing has a grim fascistic flavor. Texas governor Rick Perry signing a law against gay marriage at an evangelical church is telling you one thing: We have established evangelical Christianity as the state religion.
America is dead, and really no one seems to be mourning. At any moment, we will be as thoroughly bureaucratized as France and as theocratic as Iran. If there is any enthusiasm for — or even understanding of — what makes America distinctive and valuable, it is not currently visible on our political landscape.
In our pathetic little world, some people — Hillary Clinton, maybe — want to shape your mind and then take care of you; others — Alberto Gonzales — want to watch you all the time and then intern you. But no one wants you to be free.
>>>>>Sartwell, who writes daily at eyeofthestorm.blogs.com, teaches political science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. (Creators Syndicate)
Contact him at:
c.sartwell@verizon.net
Palmer, don't let this country see red!
The Palmer Raids: When FDR learned that "the only thing we need to fear is fear, itself!
From the internet
Sarah Feldman
MC 112
Professor Evans
Seeing Red
Most of us have seen a newspaper before; lots of us read them to
find out about the important events going on in our society. Newspapers
are supposed to give us an unbiased factual report of these events, but
that isn't always the case. Newspapers can make certain events seem
more important and more consequential than other events. This happened
during the Palmer Raids of the early 1920's. Newspapers made the Palmer
Raids more prevalent and Anti-Communist feelings stronger among the
American public during the 1920's.
To understand how the media escalated the Red Scare and Palmer
Raids it helps to have a brief history of them. After World War I there
was a Red Scare among many Americans. There are many explanations for
this: rampant inflation, a tough job market, strikes, race riots, and
the public's need for a scapegoat (Duminel 218). When Attorney General
A. Mitchell Palmer's home was bombed he immediately believed it was the
Communists and went after all of them. In November of 1919, and
December of 1920 the U.S. Department of Justice under Palmer's direction
conducted raids in a number of prominent cities (Remelgas 3). Many
persons were arrested without warrants, and without being given proper
rights. Over five thousand people were arrested, and a total of two
hundred and forty nine people were deported (Remelgas 4). After these
raids and unlawful arrests, Palmer was called before the House Rules
Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee and convicted of using
Government funds in an improper way causing the end of the first Red Scare.
In journalism there are certain standards used to draw attention to
certain articles. Alexandra Remelgas states:
The standards of responsible journalism are useful in examining the
press coverage of the Palmer Raids. Standards of responsible journalism
are limited by the selection of and emphasis of news items! The position
of a news item on the page the amount of space allotted to the item; the
use of illustrations; prominent heading and type size are factors of
affecting the emphasis of a news item. (18-19)
These 'standards of journalism' were used to draw attention to
articles in the press containing Anti-Communist or Palmer Raid
information. A large headline across the front of The New York Times
reads, in large bold print, "REDS PLOTTED COUNTRY-WIDE STRIKE ARRESTS
EXCEED 5,000, 2,635 HELD; THREE TRANSPORTS READY FOR THEM" (Jan. 1920:
1). Following that large headline there are four different articles
having to do with the Palmer Raids and Anti-communism, each with it's
own individual headline. Talk about trying to draw attention to
something. The Detroit Free Press contributed to the Anti-Communist
craze stating, "CHIEF OF U.S. ANARCH HUNT FINDS REDS HAVE RUN INTO
HOLES" (Jan. 1920: 1). This was also printed in large bold face
letters, but this time with the addition of a photo of a chief of the
red hunts, William J. Davis next to the article. These headlines don't
just report the news, they shout out to us, letting the readers know
what the 'important' stories are. These Headlines call our attention to
the terrors of Communism, and our country's success at defeating it. In
the Detroit Free Press Magazine a story entitled Mopping Up Bolshevism
Major American Red Cross Committee to South Russia (Davis 1) is spread
across the entire first page and accompanied by a large illustration of
Russian soldiers and peasant women. Right next to this terror story of
communism in Russia the is a poem titled Heaven on Earth where the first
verse reads:
Here's the time of mirth and laughter
Not in some far off hereafter,
Here's the land of smiling faces
Not in strange and distant places,
Which perhaps they'll see tomorrow
In a world where there's no sorrow,
Here's the land where men are blest
And where they achieve their best. (Guest 2)
Looking at above standards of journalism it is obvious that his
poem about the wonderful United States was placed next to the article on
Communism in Russia for the purpose of contrasting the terrible
communist Russia to the great democratic United States. The headings,
font size, and placing of articles in a newspaper imply their importance
to the reader. The way this was done with articles on the Palmer Raids
and Anti-Communism causes the reader to believe that these are the most
important topics of the day.
The impact of these articles was not based solely on where they
were placed or their headlines, but the effect they has also had a lot
to do with the content. The papers all seemed to be biased toward our
government and A. Mitchell Palmer. This doesn't come as a big surprise
though considering that anyone who spoke poorly of our government was
being arrested. Newspaper articles all seemed to greatly exaggerate the
horrors of a communist society. When speaking of a newly Communist
controlled hospital in Russia, Robert Davis states:
The new independence demoralized the nurses, particularly the night
shifts. They had the right to receive men visitors in their rooms at
night. Nurses left their duties at will. The dressings of wounded
soldiers were changed only once in three days. (Davis 1-2)
As though communism makes women promiscuous, and notice how they
neglected the patriotic soldiers, the same article describes a group of
communist officers as 'five dirty looking men.'. Again, a very
derogatory and untrue statement, Communists aren't dirtier looking
people than any other political party. An article in The New York Times
warns us that:
Radical Leaders planned to develop the recent steel and coal strikes
into a general strike and ultimately into a revolution to overthrow the
government according to information gathered by federal agents in Friday
nights wholesale round up of members of the Communist and Communist
Labor party. (Jan. 4 1920: 1)
The newspapers would have us believe that members of the Communist
party are evil, promiscuous, and dirty people who are out to ruin our
way of life. It's no wonder that the Red Scare and the Palmer Raids got
so out of hand.
Through placement of articles, headlines, size of print, and even
exaggeration the newspapers helped to convince us that the Palmer Raids
and the Red Scare were the most important events going on in 1919 and
1920. The country would have still had Anti-Communist feelings, and the
Palmer Raids probably would have still occurred without the newspapers,
but they would not have been such strong prevalent issues in our society
if the newspapers hadn't covered them the way they did.
-----------------------------
Anti-communism surfaced again in the 1950's soon after Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated. The Newspapers published daily the number of subversives, fifth-columnists, communists and symtathizers that had been rooted out of the government, and who had been serving the Truman Administration. This hysteria reached a peak with the Army-McCarthy hearings, the chairman of the Senate Un-American Activities Committee, Sen. Jos. McCarthy (R-Wis)sought to prove large numbers of communist actives were serving and being paid for by the US ARMY. Later, McCarthy was censured by the senate, when his probe got out of hand.
For another view of the Palmer Raids, we consult Samuel Eliot Morrison, the noted historian:(The Oxford History p.883 >>>>>
And so, fighting, the ship went down. On 19 November the Senate took a vote on ratifying the Treaty of Versailles, and the noes won. Brought up for reconsideration next session, it once more failed of two-thirds majority and on 19 March 1920 the Senate returned it to the President with formal notice of inability to ratify. (League of Nations)
In the meantime there were sad doings on the domestic front. President Wilson's third attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, was a Pennsylvania politician with a presidential bee in his bonnet. Appointed alien property custodian in 1917, he sequestered some $600 million worth of German and Austrian property in the United States, and saw to it that his friends got some of the bargains when this property was sold. As attorney general, Palmer decided (like Joseph McCarthy more than thirty years later) that the way to fame and power was to crack down on the "Reds." Pro-Germans were no longer dangerous, but the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia, their provocative and threatening language, and their growing control over all socialist elements everywhere, now made them the chief target of American fears. Wilson, at the first cabinet meeting since his breakdown, in April 1920, said, "Palmer, do not let this country see red!" But Palmer had been doing just that for five months. He instigated a series of lawless raids on homes and labor headquarters, on a single night of January 1920, arresting more than 4000 alleged communists in 33 different cities. In New England, hundreds of people were arrested who had no connection with radicalism of any kind. In Detroit, 300 men were arrested on false charges, held for a week in jail and denied food for 24 hours, only to be found innocent of any involvement in revolutionary movements. The raids yielded almost nothing in the way of arms or revolutionaries, but Palmer emerged from the episode a national hero. And what made his action the more abominable is that he was a practicing Quaker, even using the traditional "thee" instead of "you." In New York, the anti-radical campaign reached its climax when the state legislature expelled five Socialist members of the assembly, although the Socialist party was legally recognized and the members were innocent of any offense. This went too far, even for conservatives; the Chicago Tribune, Senator Raiding, and Charles Evans Hughes denounced their action. In Massachusetts the Sacco and Vanzetti case, though having nothing directly to do with the raids, was an offshoot of the same whipped-up anti-red hysteria.
Early in 1920 a movement against Palmer by the labor department, led by Secretary William B. Wilson and his assistant Louis Post, turned deportation proceedings to a saner direction. Post insisted on giving aliens proper counsel and fair hearings. He canceled action against dozens of them, and by spring released nearly half those arrested in Palmer's January raids. Palmer demanded that Post be fired for his "tender solicitude for social revolution," but when Post was haled before a congressional committee, he made such a convincing presentation that his critics were forced to back down. In the end, although 5000 arrest warrants had been sworn out, only a few more than 600 aliens were actually deported.
Palmer now let his attempts to capitalize on the "Red Menace" get out of hand. He issued a series of warnings of a revolutionary plot which would be launched on i May 1920, to overthrow the United States government. The National Guard was called out, and in New York City the entire police force was put on 24-hour duty. May Day passed without a single shot being fired or bomb exploded. As a result, the country concluded that Palmer had cried wolf once too often.
There was a lot more of this sort of thing going around; more hate literature, more nasty, sour, and angry groups promoting "hundred per cent Americanism" than at any earlier period of our history, or any later one prior to the 19 50*3. Anti-Semitism appeared openly for the first time in America, and was nourished by Henry Ford, of all people. The Dearborn newspaper that he controlled reprinted that hoary fake, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," supposedly proving a Jewish conspiracy to destroy civilization; and Ford either wrote or had compiled for him a book The International Jew (1920), which blamed the war and everything else on that race. There were also anti-Catholic pamphlets accusing the Knights of Columbus of indulging in obscene rites. The Ku Klux Klan was revived and did well, especially in the North and West; the Klan elected governors in Oklahoma and Oregon, and in 192/1 practically took over Indiana. Favorite targets of the Klansmen were alcohol and adultery; but when David Stephenson, "Grand Dragon" of Indiana, who had made millions out of membership fees and selling nightshirts, was convicted of raping a young woman and causing her death, the Klan began to decline.
Another source of trouble, which the peddlers of hate whipped up, was the northward move of many Southern Negroes to work in war industries and better their condition. This, as usual, was resented by white workers, especially recent immigrants, and led to bloody riots. In one at East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, forty-seven people, mostly Negroes, were killed and hundreds wounded. In July of 1919, the month that President Wilson returned from Paris and submitted the Treaty to the Senate, there occurred in the pital capital city the most serious race riots in its history between whites and Negroes, not quelled until thousands of troops had been brought in to help the police, and six people killed. In the same month there was a three-day race riot in Chicago in which thirty-six people were killed. There were also major racial disorders that year in New York and Omaha, at least seven in the South, mostly occasioned by Negro veterans of the war having the "impudence" to demand their rights as citizens.
But for his disability, Woodrow Wilson could have been nominated for a third presidential term by the Democratic national convention. Palmer for a time thought he would get it; but he and McAdoo, the President's son-in-law, killed each other off, and Governor James A. Cox of Ohio obtained the nomnination. Cox was little known nationally, like Franklin Pierce, and as unimportant. Reversing the usual procedure, his vice-presidential nominee, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the man with a future..<<<
NOTE: The German-American Line ended up in a New York House controlled by Herbert Walker, G.H.W.Bush's grandfather, from the Alien Property Custodian.
"And the least of these, my brothers"
The Least of These, my Brothers
In order to sort out Politics, some definitions are in order. There are two Political parties: the Republicans and the Democrats. History suggests a large number of third parties, only a few of which we can mention here. But they are bones in a graveyard of lost causes. Mind you, the causes live on, but parties seem to be given only one chance. Some would have you believe there are two parties, the conservatives and the liberals, but we'll take a look at that below. One party, the Federalist, lives on in the person of the Federalist Society. This party of Alexander Hamilton is supposed to have been the party of George Washington and John Adams. One of Hamilton's contributions is the Federalist Papers, which he co-authored with James Madison and John Jay. Their principal cause was suggesting that there be only one political party in this country, and there was, until Thomas Jefferson made the case for a Democrat party, which lives on in much altered form, today.
Efforts to resurrect the Federalists went astray, but in the aftermath, and the unmourned passing of the Anti-Mason Party, the Whig Party was born. I suppose its best representative is Pres. William Henry Harrison, but its gift to America was from its ashes rose the Republican Party. Jefferson's party was officially the Democrat-Republican, but by 1856 it had split into the Northern and Southern branches, but held together enough to elect James Buchanan.
In 1860, fortified with a growing number of Abolitionists, headed by Horace Greeley, the Republican party burst forth in full bloom, electing Abraham Lincoln over a badly split bunch of Democrats with Stephen Douglas (Douglas-Lincoln debates) and John C. Breckinridge (a successor of John C. Calhoun as leaders. In this election, the cause of the abolitionists was ratified when the Southern Democrats rebelled, and forces loyal to them in South Carolina fired upon Ft. Sumpter, and broke open the Civil War. Winning the war enabled the Republicans to hold onto power for enough years for them to become thoroughly corrupted, and other causes could gain adherents, and make an electoral showing. Below, we will discuss the politics of Wendell Phillips, who suggested the most direct route to being elected was to hold onto your basic beliefs, but mention only half or less, so as to not disaffect those who might not want to hold the whole ideology.
As the 20th century dawned both of the two major parties had a divided base, usually one side would get his candidate nominated for president, the other for vice-president. Such was the election of 1900, McKinley of Ohio representing the more conservative wing and Roosevelt of New York the Liberal or Moderate, of the Republicans. Roosevelt showed remarkable energy, persuaded a great deal of reform in the Party, and significant increases in the degree of regulation powers assumed by the Federal Government, in such enactments as the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, and the National Parks, that had been urged by "Teddy" Roosevelt. In the Solid South, following Reconstruction, voters were allowed to return to the booth, but through an oppressive set of laws, most of the freed slaves found that voting was denied to them as a class. In fact, the entire legal system was constructed in a way to deny these unfortunates the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, and the proclamations of the Declaration of Independence. A classic case was adjudicated in Plessy vs. Ferguson, where a mulatto was denied permission to public transportation, and in a separate but equal decision, confirmed by the United States Supreme Court. Rights of the minorities were only marginally better in the North, but judicial restrictions were largely absent. Later, in 1912, the Republicans were challenged by Wilson, but also T.R. Roosevelt and his "Bull-Moose" Party, which Wilson won.
In New York, the Democrats and Republicans were challenged by the Liberal Party, which was identified in the 1950's on with Robert "Bob" Wagner, who held a number of offices, including Mayor of New York. In most national races, the Liberals joined the Democrats, and often fielded their own local candidates. Later, in the 50's James Buckley came up with the Conservative Party sort of a offset to the Liberal Party, and was elected U.S. Senator. His brother, William, a one time contestant for Mayor, created the conservative digest, The National Review, filling it with articles from a fiscal conservative viewpoint. In Buckley's case his pronounced Catholic view lent an air to the movement, attracting social conservatives as well. It is supposed that the name Conservative echoed the great P.M. Of England, Benjamin Disrali, but had served to label individuals in both parties, in particular F.D. Roosevelt, who labeled Hoover a Liberal, and ran as a fiscal conservative, before unveiling the "New Deal."
A sensitive issue. The Imperial Powers were suspicious of intellectual movements, especially after the American Revolution and particularly the French Revolution. The sentiment carried along by the revolutionary partisans could infect millions, and threaten the existence of the great powers. In the 1800's writings by Henry David Thoreau, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx had great appeal, as the ideas suggested the means by which Utopia on Earth could be achieved with what seemed to be, simple methods. In some cases, an accompanying religion was absent, which the Roman Empire had relied on to quell mass discontent since the time of Constantine.
America was not to escape the effect of these ideas, and organization of Labor Unions were one of the first achievements to gain recognition from the American Government, though it was not without some bloodshed. In general, this trend was labeled socialistic, and resembled in some form the Utopias projected by Plato and Jesus Christ, among others, which had failed to develop. But others had been tried, and history is replete with examples, some of which were fairly successful, but not on a mass scale. In Europe, the time was ripe for experimentation, and in almost every country parties arose, some gaining power, and in Russia, the Imperial Tzars were overthrown and a Socialistic government replaced them after considerable bloodshed. In America, tempers were cooled after our great Civil War, and other means were sought to stem the tide of socialism, and largely it was contained by restrictions which did not allow it to grow beyond small groups. One such group, the Communist party was heavily survieled, and given heavy legal barriers in its attempts to organize and gain power. The Socialist party grew after starting in the 19th century, and I have copied a chapter from the book, Pacifist's Progress by Bernard K. Johnpoll. (Quadrangle, 1970) The book highlights the contributions of Norman Thomas, who was a perennial candidate for president on the Socialist Ticket. Many of his views are little different than those of George Fox, the founder of the Quaker Movement some 350 years earlier.
Thomas' and Wilson's failures were principally due to their inability to choose success through compromise, in exchange for dirtying their perfect ideology. But first, a little dialogue that goes on perpetuating the myth that the major parties cannot successfuly govern in a biparitsan cooperative manner. To Quote a successful Sen. Olympia Snowe on the recent Filibuster- Nuclear Option - "It took Comity, Cooperation, and Collaboration." And her Collegue, Sen. Susan Collins "Good Faith, Mutual Respect and Trust." See if you can find it!
12-16-02: News at Home A DIALOGUE
Our thanks to the History News Network
Debate: Was It a Crime to Have Supported the Dixiecrat Party?
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If HNN gave an award to the historian who had made the most controversial statement of the month, Norman Ravitch undoubtedly would have to be considered a leading contender for December. Mr. Ravitch, professor of history emeritus at the University of California, Riverside, argued in a recent posting on Conservative net -- a highly respected "daily electronic newsletter" for scholars and researchers -- that Trent Lott "has a right to remember Thurmond's Dixiecrat past. It is part of history. It is not a crime to have been supportive of it. It remains more than doubtful that the black population of America, or the rest of us, have really benefited from integration and civil rights legislation."
Ravitch's statement prompted a vigorous exchange of views, excerpted below:
NORMAN RAVITCH
I hold no particular love for Senator Lott who is a wheeling, dealing
Good Ole Boy whose leadership of the Senate GOP has not been
particularly impressive. But in the present flap about his comments
on Thurmond I have this observation.
The criticism of Lott and demand that he resign, along with the
Confederate Flag controversy in Georgia and South Carolina, all seem
to me to be a liberal attempt to apply political correctness to the
past as well as the present and future.
Lott has a right to remember Thurmond's Dixiecrat past. It is part of
history. It is not a crime to have been supportive of it. It remains
more than doubtful that the black population of America, or the rest
of us, have really benefited from integration and civil rights
legislation.
As for the flag, it is a remembrance of a terrible civil war which was
the worst example of fraternal hatred in history up to that time. All
races and sides need to remember. Keeping the flag helps us to
remember. Political correctness makes us forget.
The Democrats are trying to use these issues to make the GOP the
racist party. So be it. The Democrats ruled for a long time as the
racist party.
RICHARD JENSEN
Mr. Jensen, the editor of Conservativenet, is emeritus professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
It should be noted that Lott never endorsed segregation, and that Thurmond as governor of SC had a strong reputation for opposing the KKK and lynching. His biographers in fact credit him with ending lynching in South Carolina.
SAM TANENHAUS
Mr. Tanenhaus is the author of Whittaker Chambers: A Biography.
I'm curious to know the historical basis for [Ravitch's belief that "It remains more than doubtful that the black population of America, or the rest of us, have really benefited from integration and civil rights legislation."] Americans--and "the rest of us"--really better off in the days of Jim Crow, poll taxes, whites-only primaries, "literacy" tests? Was Barry Goldwater mistaken to support civil rights legislation in 1957? It's worth remembering that civil rights was deemed by the likes of Acheson and JFK as a critical element of cold war policy in the 1950's and 60's, as a number of recent studies have shown in some detail.
It's quite true that Thurmond's record has been somewhat distorted. He seen in the 1940's as a Southern progressive. But it's a mistake to depict him as a principled states-righter, and opponent of "big government." In fact he endorsed Truman in 1947 and broke with him, and the Democratic Party, only after the Civil Rights Commission issued its report. Thus did Race--or rather, racism--dominate his campaign. A good, undervalued source on the 1948 election--probably the greatest of the century--is Gary Donaldson's Truman Defeats Dewey (University Press of Kentucky, 1999).
MICHAEL KAZIN
Mr. Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and the author of The Populist Persuasion: An American History.
Conservatives have made political gains by attacking busing and affirmative action, but I never expected you all to defend Jim Crow! Perhaps Ravitch and other respondents on this list would like to explain to Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, and J.C. Watts that they'd really be better off sweeping up and cooking meals at the White House, the Supreme Court, the Capitol, and the State Department than making policy in such places?
As for Jensen's defense of Thurmond: I'm sure the black citizens of SC were extremely grateful to the governor for ending lynching -- amid a national uproar against the practice. But he still fought to bar them from voting and from enjoying equal opportunities in employment, housing, and education until those damned outside agitators changed the law of the land.
These apologies, even defenses, of Lott's reprehensible statement(s) only underline the fact that conservatives can't be trusted to make distinctions between "political correctness" and moral responsibility.
RICHARD JENSEN
Thurmond was the single most important leader in the South in bringing salaries of black teachers up to the white averages. He also was a vigorous opponent of lynching and the KKK. The question of black voting and housing & employment was not on the table in 1948--Michael is thinking about episodes a decade later.
RALPH LUKER
Mr. Luker, an Atlanta historian, is co-editor of the first two volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King and a writer for the History News Service.
How sad Norman Ravitch is willing to accept on behalf of the Republican Party the label "racist," an epithet otherwise banned from this venue. Better he should go back to reading National Review, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal or listening to the advice of the Family Research Council, the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism and Jack Kemp -- all of whom seem to think that President Bush wouldn't want the nation to believe that behind the face of an elephant is a dixiecrat jackass.
ABIGAIL THERNSTROM
Ms. Thernstrom is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York, a commissioner on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Four Republican Appointees on US Commission on Civil Rights issue statement deploring Senator Lott's recent comments:
As Republican appointees to the United States Commission on Civil
Rights, we deplore Senator Trent Lott's December 5, 2002 statement
that if Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948 "we wouldn't
have had all these problems over all these years."
The central issue on which Thurmond ran was support for racial
segregation. Senator Lott thus lends credibility to the view that such
civil rights advances as President Truman's executive order mandating
an end to racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces, the Supreme
Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Acts
of 1957 and 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were grave
mistakes. Certainly, in 1948, Strom Thurmond opposed all of them.
This is a particularly shameful remark coming from a leader of the
Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, and the party that
supported all of these essential steps forward far more vigorously
than did the Democratic Party, which at the time was the home of
congressional southerners committed to white supremacy.
The civil rights era was a shining moment in American history. We
believe Senator Lott agrees, and invite him to join us in celebrating
the revolutionary change in the status of African Americans that
flowed from a movement in which blacks and whites joined hands to make
a better America.
Abigail Thernstrom
Jennifer C. Braceras
Peter N. Kirsanow
Russell G. Redenbaugh
Commissioners, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Pacifist's Passion
NORMAN THOMAS and the Decline of American Socialism
PACIFIST'S PROGRESS by Bernard K. Johnpoll
PREFACE
Norman Herman Thomas was the hero of my childhood and youth. When my contemporaries were extolling the glories of Tom Harmon or Johnny Mize or Max Carey or if they had theatrical ambitions of Katherine Cornell, or Fred Alien or Leslie Howard, I was busy on street-corners singing the virtues of Norman Thomas and the placid revolution he exemplified. But that was many years ago. A war and an explosive peace which followed have exposed the dreams of my youth as nightmares or apparitions; in their stead have arisen new dreams, new hopes, and new lethargy. I am no longer a Socialist nor is the memory of Norman Thomas any longer quite so sacred to me. His philosophy appears today to be obsolete, even though this was not true when he espoused it. I suspect that Norman Thomas was no longer a Socialist in his latter days; his last book, Choices, far from seeming the work of a convinced Socialist, reads more like that of an ethicist pleading for the Golden Rule. Yet Thomas must be given his due. All his life, as he fought for civil liberties, for peace, and for an elusive ideal which he labeled democratic socialism, Thomas sought to improve the lot of "the least of these my brothers." He was a great, honest, and compassionate human being. Moreover, he was a man able to embody his views in action; he was a man who faced without fear a court injunction, an unfriendly crowd egged on by the corrupt mayor of Jersey City, or a lynch mob of Arkansas planters. He struggled without equivocation for what he believed to be the right. At times he erred, and being human he was less than eager to concede those errors. Yet, when I spoke with him in October 1963, he admitted that he had been wrong in his evaluation of communism and World War II, two of the major issues on which he took strong stands. If he had his life to live over again he would, he told me then, have changed some of his positions and, accordingly, some of his actions; but he would have followed the same path, for he believed he could do no other. He dedicated his life to peace, freedom, and justice, as he interpreted those terms, and he was then as much dedicated to these aspirations as he had been more than forty years earlier.
In its final assessment of Norman Thomas, after his death in December 1968, the New York Times called him a "mover and shaker" whose "moral fervor for social justice has contributed to a more just America." There can be no doubt that he was a "mover and shaker" or that he had great moral fervor. It was this moral fervor which led him into socialism, his own modified version of pacifism, and the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties. It was this same moral fervor which allowed him to attempt to influence the direction of his country during his fifty years of continuous political activity. Whether he succeeded is another matter and it is to this question that I address myself in this book.
INTRODUCTION
For forty years, from 1928 until his death in 1968, Norman Thomas and the American Socialist party were virtually synonymous. Yet except for a short period during the 1930's Thomas was not a .Marxist, though the party had long prided itself on its thoroughgoing Marxism. He was the political personification of the Protestant Social Gospel, in a party which included a great many Jews, Catholics, and nonbelievers; he was also an intellectual in a party which claimed to be of, by, and for the working class.
Thomas came to American socialism during World War I motivated by the poverty he witnessed in the neighborhood where he was a minister and by the Socialist party's opposition to the war. It was his pacifism that first led him into political action through his work with the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, the American Union against Militarism, and the No-Conscription League; yet Thomas, who opposed the use of force, allied himself in the Socialist party during the 1930's with a faction that accepted, or at least refused to oppose, the use of armed insurrection as a means for achieving socialism.
O
Under Thomas's leadership the Socialist party withered and virtually disappeared. Internal disputes dominated the years he was its leader; and these disputes were at times sufficiently irreconcilable to rend the party with schisms. Each split had its own mass exodus of disaffected Socialists. And yet, despite the decline of the party's fortunes during his stewardship, particularly from 1932 to 1941, Thomas remained, and remains today, a popular figure in American political folklore. By the time of his death, it had become almost commonplace to give Thomas credit for many of the innovations, among others, social security, minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws, and public works, that were in fact enacted into law under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yet these same reforms were propagated by the Socialist party campaigners at least as early as 1908, or more than ten years before Thomas joined the party.
What was Norman Thomas's role in the collapse and disintegration of the American Socialist party? And why has Norman Thomas been enshrined in the Valhalla of American political folk myths? These are two of the questions which this book will attempt to answer.
2
The political movement which Norman Thomas inherited was a mere shadow of its old self when he came to lead it in 1928. Organized in 1901 from a coalition of disparate regional and local Socialist organizations, the Socialist party ranged in ideology from dogmatic Marxist to Populist to municipal reformist to Christian ethicist; in political leadership, from big-city boss Victor Berger to the almost Christlike figure of Eugene Victor Debs, to the lackluster Marxian dialectician Morris Hill-quit to the revolutionary orator and organizer William Hay-wood. From the beginning, the party was rent with dissension. Ostensibly, disagreements were almost always over questions of tactics and theory, but in reality they were caused by clashes of personality. The founders of the Socialist party in 1901 brought their own organizations into the party with them. Adorns Hill-quit and most of the Easterners from New York and Boston brought the remnants of the anti-De Leon forces of the Socialist Labor party, who had split from the older organization when the vituperative, vindictive Daniel De Leon gained complete dictatorial control of it. Victor Berger and his Germanic followers in Milwaukee brought a political organization which included hundreds of members. The saintly though hardly erudite Gene Debs brought the remnants of the Social Democracy of America, the Utopian foster child of his nearly successful attempt at organizing an industrial union of all railroad workers. George Herron, fresh from his battles for academic freedom in Iowa, brought a goodly number of his fellow Social Gospeleers. (By 1908 there were an estimated three hundred ministers in the ranks of the Socialist party, a source of embarrassment to the .Marxists who relegated most clergymen to their own "materialistic" version of purgatory.) Other groups were involved as well; and, as the party developed, new factions arose continually, until the party was an unsteady coalition of minuscule sects each with its own prophet. Only rarely before 1918, however, did one group of
Thomas's role in the collapse and final Socialists purge another; feuding was kept "within the family." True, there had been some splits, some schisms, some "bloodletting," but this was rare. The ouster of the IWW's "Big Bill" Haywood from the national executive committee in 1913 for his defense of sabotage as a possible weapon in the class war was the most significant; but this hardly constituted a purge in the classic sense.1
If there was a dominant philosophy in the Socialist party during its pre-Norman Thomas years, it was a simplistic Marxism best exemplified by Hillquit's Socialism in Theory and Practice and the 1908 Declaration of Principles and Electoral Platform. The latter was basically a pedantic reiteration of the class-struggle thesis coupled with appeals for working-class political action aimed at ending the capitalist system. "Capitalism," it declared, "keeps the masses of workingmen in poverty, destitution, physical exhaustion, and ignorance." Therefore, the "wageworking class... has the most direct interest in abolishing the capitalist system." To prevent the working class from seizing power, the Socialist declaration proclaimed, the capitalists "must keep in their pay all organs of the public powers, public mind and public conscience." The Socialists insisted, in effect, that the government of the United States, and all other political parties, served as the executive committee of the capitalist class. There could be no ultimate freedom, the Socialists declared, until "class rule" was destroyed by the working-class victory which would "free all humanity from class rule" and would "realize the international brotherhood of man." A victory of this kind could only come when the workingmen elected a Socialist government.
But until the achievement of the Marxian Utopia, the Socialists proposed social and economic reforms which would alleviate the sufferings of the mass of the workers of the United States. These reforms included public works for the unemployed; legal restrictions on hours of labor; abolition of child labor; factory inspection; compulsory insurance against unemployment, old age, illness, accident, invalidism, and death; the graduated income tax; steep and graduated inheritance taxes, and the establishment of a separate Department of Labor.2 Although these demands were considered by most Socialists to be of only temporary importance, they were the basis for almost all campaigning; as a full-blown program, socialism was rarely, if ever, the theme of a campaigner's speech. Thus, the official call for a radical socialization of society, coupled with actual work aimed at reformation of the existing order, remained a hallmark of Socialist campaigning after the war, as well as during the early and most successful years of Thomas's leadership.
3
The Social Gospel movement was, to quote one of its historians, "the uniquely American movement toward the socializing and ethicizing of Protestantism." Its origins can be found in the social ethics of the Old Testament Prophets, particularly Isaiah, and in the social and ethical teachings of Jesus. Historically, both Jews and Christians had attempted to create a human society on earth which would be based on the Judeo-Christian ethic. Since the communism of the earliest Apostolic Christians, social redemption has been part of Christian doctrine. Certainly, it was among the dominant themes of the Puritans, who, rebelling against the socially-anesthetized formalism of the seventeenth-century Church in England, sought to build a new church and a new society in the New World.
The Social Gospel carried that tradition into industrial America of the latter half of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth centuries. Its immediate roots were primarily in New England Unitarianism, which "stressed the dignity and divine possibilities of man, the achievement of salvation through character . . . the unity and immanence of God, and the importance of the present life. . . ." The Social Gospel had other sources besides Unitarianism: the anti-slavery movement, particularly that part of the movement led by Wendell Phillips which saw in the economic or social exploitation of any human being a violation of Christianity; the liberalizing tendency in theology, best exemplified by such men as Frederick Maurice and Horace Bushell; the rising social consciousness among nontheologian scholars such as John R. Commons, Lester Ward, and Richard T. Ely; and the utopianism of Edward Bellamy and Laurence Gronlund.
Like the Socialist party, the Social Gospel was composed of several ideologies, ranging from philanthropism to socialism. Despite differences, however, a basic ideology permeated the movement. It was based on the passage in the Lord's Prayer, composed by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Because the Social Gospeleers proposed that God's will be done on earth, they rejected as antithetical to Christianity the Augustinian assumption that life on this earth was merely transitory in preparation for some future existence in the City of God. It was on this earth, the Social Gospeleers insisted, that God's will should come to full fruition. In essence, the Social Gospel reasserted the basic Puritan "this worldliness," whose primary aim was the establishment of the "Kingdom of God on earth." Unlike their Calvinist precursors, however, the Social Gospeleers interpreted the "Kingdom of God" as a purely ethical society. Thus, to quote Socialist-Christian historian James Dombrowski, the "most prominent feature of the Social Gospel is its emphasis upon the saving of society rather than upon the salvation of individuals."
The Social Gospel was basically optimistic. It assumed that man was by nature good, that only the pressures of a venal society corrupted humanity. This assumption merely reiterated what most social scientists of the period were claiming. It led some of the Social Gospeleers to revolutionary conclusions (though not rebellion). Although some, possibly most, of the leaders of the movement were "liberals advocating the ethic of charity," there were some who believed that only a complete uprooting of the system, a full Socialist reconstruction of society, could bring about their dream of a Kingdom of God on earth. But even the most radical Socialist Christians were wedded to the concept of gradualism. This was natural in view of the pacifist nature of the religious base of the Social Gospel and the liberal Christian emphasis on moral persuasion, which was one of the keys to Social Gospel ideology.
The Socialist Christians agreed that a complete redistribution of economic, and hence of social, power was necessary if men were to live as brothers in the projected kingdom. They insisted that production for profit had to give way to production for use. They differed from their Marxian contemporaries primarily in the emphasis they placed on the means to be used to achieve their ends, and in their social origins. Whereas the Marxian Socialists were generally of working-class origin (although many of them rose into the middle class as attorneys, teachers, and physicians), most of the Social Gospel Socialists came out of the middle and upper classes, and almost all were ministers, publicists, or university professors.3 The working-class oriented Marxian Socialists were less interested in means than in ends; because they came out of the working-class, or were still in it, their primary interests were still basically working class, the achievement of higher pay, shorter hours, protection against unemployment, old age, illness, and improved work conditions generally, regardless of the methods used to achieve them. The Social Gospel Socialists, being further removed from the working class, never lost their interest in means. Immediate alleviation of economic distress, though important, was of less significance to them than the methods used to achieve it. Thus the Social Gospel Socialists were more involved with civil liberties and civic betterment movements than were their Marxian comrades. The Christian Socialists fought against corrupt unionists, for example, whereas the so-called Marxians were ready to support them as long as they could "deliver the goods" for their members. The two groups could thus work harmoniously together only under limited conditions in which means were not at issue.
Norman Thomas was a Social Gospel Christian Socialist.
4
In 1844, Wendell Phillips, one of Norman Thomas's heroes, was sorely tempted to become a practical politician in the small anti-slavery Liberty party. But he refused because: "The politician must conceal half his principles to carry forth the other half, must regard, not rigid principle and strict right, but only such a degree of right as will allow him at the same time to secure numbers. His object is immediate success." Phillips considered himself a moral reformer who worshiped truth: "his object is duty, not success. He can wait, no matter how many desert, how few remain; he can trust always that the whole truth, however unpopular, can never harm the whole of virtue.4 In sum, Phillips was reiterating the political truism that the practical politician must be willing to compromise to achieve his ends; the ideologue, whom he called a moral reformer, who has no expectation of achieving the goal he sets forth, need never compromise.
Like Wendell Phillips, Norman Thomas was a moral reformer, an ideologue. But, unlike Wendell Phillips he also thought himself a politician. Indeed, during his entire political career, he was faced with the unpleasant choice of being a political failure or of compromising his ideals.
5
Norman Thomas's best friend, Roger Baldwin, has described him as "a great denouncer, aroused to indignation by one injustice or another." Yet he was more than that, he was also a great advocate pleading for a society based on the Social Gospel and unwilling to settle for less. Thomas was a great orator, an evangelist preaching the gospel of a better world free of hunger and despair and war and injustice, a world where all men would be brothers cooperating with one another in building an ever better tomorrow.
Tall and thin, inclining toward the gaunt, Thomas looked every bit the Old Testament prophet as he denounced the sins of society. Beginning with a reasoned critique of the society in which he lived, he would rise to thunderous heights of indignation as he assailed the inhumanity of a social order that condemned fully one-third of its population to poverty, permitted its young to die on far-off battlefields, consigned one-tenth of its population to ghettos lacking the minimal amenities of life, or which with one bomb slaughtered 100,000 human beings in a distant land. "He was," to quote Baldwin, "a crusader, an evangelist, a humanist to whom nothing mattered more than the search for the right road to abolish war, end poverty and create a world order of freedom and equality. His socialism was his search for the elusive road.5
The object of this book is to explore that search.
