Posted on 09/20/2008 6:45:01 PM PDT by Mike Bates
NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard did a fine job of analyzing today's Associated Press story "Poll: Racial misgivings of whites an Obama issue." I found this passage from the AP story particularly provocative:
Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.
Did the United States, as the piece contends, enshrine slavery in its Constitution?
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, "enshrine" means "to enclose in or as if in a shrine" or "to preserve or cherish as sacred." Over at thesaurus.com, synonyms for the word are "cherish, consecrate, idolize, sanctify."
In a 2002 Heritage Foundation article, Dr. Matthew Spaulding writes:
John Adams opposed slavery his entire life as a "foul contagion in the human character" and "an evil of colossal magnitude." James Madison called it "the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
In 1987, former aide to President Johnson, Jack Valenti penned a commentary for The New York Times. His purpose was to challenge comments on the Constitution made by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a man placed on the court by Valenti's boss. Writing about the Constitutional Convention, Valenti noted:
Nevertheless, white-haired old George Mason of Virginia was openly and passionately abolitionist. He wanted all slaves freed. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, stumping heavily on his wooden leg, vented his anger. His words rang through the hall. ''The curse of heaven on the states where it [ slavery ] prevailed,'' he thundered.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
yah! We need to talk about this right now......
You remind me of my doctor who asked me how my Summer is going as they put the speculum in my ....well I think you have the picture.
I will bet you 10 bucks that the ignorant POS who wrote that is referring to the “Three Fifths Compromise”.
...All men are created equal. The founders knew that the Constitution THAT THEY WROTE would eventually free the slaves, look it up.
We should have known we’d be getting this kind of BS when we stopped teaching history in our schools.
B-U-M-P everyone’s accusing me
They had to dump history to make time for self-esteem and sex ed.
Anti-American Democrats have no problems trashing America with boldface lies to appeal to minority voters.
And his conclusion was:
“The point of all this is that, contrary to the AP article, our Constitution did not enshrine slavery. The practice was in no way cherished or sanctified. Acknowledging that it was reluctantly tolerated so that the nation could be formed is closer to the truth.”
Which leads me to believe that the AP writer is just trying to get into Whoopie’s pants.
No, but it didn’t preclude it either.
This was a huge compromise issue to get the South to join the Union. Certainly not one of the finest parts of our history. All of history is like that.
The people of a time are a product of their time. Lamenting history it doesn’t change it, but history doesn’t mean that we haven’t changed.
Certainly people 200 years from now are going to judge us very differntly than we judge ourselves.
” He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivatng and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people for whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.]”
-Thomas Jefferson’s (the author of the Constitution) original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/AMERICA/DECLAR.HTM
Based on the above, I would argue that our Constitution does NOT “enshrine” slavery although it does mention it indirectly.
I have no doubt whatsoever that you are correct. I made that point on another thread, and someone jumped in and pointed out to me that the “Three Fifths Compromise” had nothing to do with slavery, but was a compromise in law designed to get around the problem of slavery. It did not legalize or make it a part of the Constitution.
Slavery was enshrined in this country by the British long before the Constitution.
I had an interesting conversation in the San Diego airport back in May. I struck up a conversation with an obviously well read, intelligent liberal lawyer. I am as conservative as they come, and we both soon had the measure of each other.
It was a very civil conversation (and enjoyable) and he was a civil war buff. As we began to discuss politics, Obama, race and slavery (as an extension of his civil war interest) bubbled to the top.
To my astonishment, he made the classic reference to the “Three Fifths Compromise” in his words “codifying slaves as being only 3/5ths as worthy as whites”. I interrupted him and explained it to him...he looked at me in utter bafflement...and when he saw the logic of what it really was, he knew he had simply accepted his understanding of it as a truth a long time ago, and never critically examined it.
I give the guy credit. He just said: “If that’s true, I had it wrong all this time. Are you sure?”
I told him it is a well documented and discussed piece of history, but is not (in my opinion) taught to kids that way today.
(Representatives andvdirect Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.)
Slavery in the Constitution is hidden in the phrase "all other Persons", not enshrined.
This “enshrined in the Constitution” business makes me wonder if this is a new tactic of the Left: Instead of pretending to be fearless defenders of the document and insisting that it says things that it doesn’t, I wonder if a significant portion of the Obama Left is ready to trash it altogether.
Certainly, there are parts of the Constitution—the part of the Fifth Amendment that forbids “takings” by the government without compensation, the entire Second Amendment—that the Left would prefer to kill.
The removal of the anti-slavery clause from the Declaration of Independence and the 3/5 compromise in the Constitution may be regretted now, particularly after the ravages of the Civil War.
But in 1776 and 1789 they were absolutely necessary in order to unite the colonies to attain independence and to craft a document for a permanent constitutional democracy.
A painful traige, yes.
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