Vanderbilt professor outrages Confederate progeny

A Vanderbilt University professor has stirred outrage in Dixie by declaring that Confederates were "cowards masquerading as civilized men" who should have been executed at the end of the Civil War. "Every Confederate soldier deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows," Jonathan David Farley, an assistant professor of mathematics, wrote in a commentary in the Tennessean, Nashville's largest newspaper. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the professor wrote, is an organization that "honors traitors." Vanderbilt sparked conflict over Southern heritage this year when the university said it would strip the word "Confederate" from a dormitory, Confederate Memorial Hall, built in the 1930s with donations raised by the UDC. Mr. Farley's Nov. 20 column in the Tennessean increased the furor. Mr. Farley has complained of threatening e-mails and phone calls, while the newspaper has received letters from across the country. "The majority of the letters have been from out of state, because it became an Internet thing," said John Gibson, the reader editor of the Tennessean, adding that out-of-state letters "rarely" are published in the paper. Tim Chavez, a columnist for the Tennessean, described one 66-year-old reader's frustration over Mr. Farley's views: "This just burns me because I don't know what to do about it," the man said. "If someone compared your ancestors to mass murderers, what would you do?" Mr. Farley called Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest "a 19th century Hitler," called Confederate heritage groups "the new holocaust revisionists," and said that "the race problems that wrack America to this day are due largely to the fact that the Confederacy was not thoroughly destroyed, its leaders and soldiers executed, and their lands given to the landless freed slaves." Allen Sullivant, chief of heritage defense for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), said Mr. Farley is "entitled to his opinion, even one that's based on misinformation, ignorance and bigotry." In response to complaints from SCV members, Mr. Farley has posted e-mail replies that "drip venom," Mr. Sullivant said. Replying to one SCV member, Mr. Farley vowed to "form our own armies to expose and smash you. Very simply, we represent good and you represent evil." Mr. Sullivant said such "blatantly, openly hateful" messages show that Mr. Farley is "just one of these people who's got a real chip on his shoulders." A native of Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Farley, 32, is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities. His parents are both academics. His father, an immigrant from Jamaica, holds a Ph.D. in economics, while his mother, an immigrant from Guyana, holds a Ph.D. in history. On his university Web page (www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~farley) Mr. Farley poses beside a large poster of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, whom he calls a hero. Mr. Farley has been politically active since moving to Nashville from Berkeley, Calif., in 1997, mounting a Green Party campaign for Congress this year, describing the two major party candidates as "two old white men with identical views." He challenged Rep. Jim Cooper, Tennessee Democrat, in the Nov. 5 election, placing a distant fourth with 1,205 votes. Last year, Mr. Farley wrote an article criticizing Chelsea Clinton for supporting the U.S. anti-terrorism effort. "One of Bill Clinton's redeeming traits is the fact that, when he studied at Oxford, he opposed America's war," Mr. Farley, then a visiting scholar at England's Oxford University, wrote in a British newspaper, the Guardian. "Maybe sometime, Chelsea, you will too." A Vanderbilt spokesman said that Mr. Farley, who is not tenured, is protected by the university's academic-freedom policy. "Professor Farley is speaking as an individual, he does not represent Vanderbilt University's policy, and his statements are neither supported nor endorsed by the university," said Michael Schoenfeld, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor for public affairs.

Yet, consider, for example, this from our 16th president's 1860 inaugural address: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And two years later, as the sitting president, Lincoln wrote: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union. (Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862)" And there is this, as well, from 1858: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

It's easy to suggest people who quote these particular segments of Lincoln's writing are being partisan.

Lincoln said a lot.

"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."

8/24/54

"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.?

-- You say A. is a white, and B. is black. It is --color--, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly? -- You mean the whites are --intellectually-- the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of --interest--; and, if you can make it your --interest--, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."

1854

"I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

August, 1858

"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--But I do expect it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is the course of ultimate extinctioon; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new--North as well as South. Have we no tendency towards the latter condition?"

1858

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."

3/1/59

"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. ....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."

8/23/63

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel...

In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

4/4/64

"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."

4/11/65

sources: "Abraham Lincoln, Mystic Chords of Memory" published by the Book of the Month Club, 1984 and:

"Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Library of the Americas, Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. 1989

Lincoln clearly was preparing the way for black suffrage.

Consider these letters:

Private

General Hunter

Executive Mansion

Washington D.C. April 1, 1863

My dear Sir:

I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It is mportant to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape, and grow, and thrive, in the south; and in precisely the same proportion, it is important to us that it shall. Hence the utmost caution and viglilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them; and we should do the same to perserve and increase them.

Yours truly

A. Lincoln

_________________________________________________________

Hon. Andrew Johnson

Executive Mansion,

My dear Sir:

Washington, March 26. 1863.

I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability, and position, to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave-state, and himself a slave- holder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it please do not dismiss the thought.

Yours truly

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hon Soc of War

Executive Mansion

Washington

July 21, 1863

My Dear Sir:

I desire that a renewed and vigorous effort be made to raise colored forces along the shores of the Missippi [sic]. Please consult the General-in-chief; and if it is perceived that any acceleration of the matter can be effected, let it be done. I think the evidence is nearly conclusive that Gen. Thomas is one of the best, if not the very best, instruments for this service.

Yours truly

--------------------------------------

Lincoln also proposed --privately-- to the new governor of Louisiana that the new state constitution include voting rights for blacks. A year later, in April, 1865 he came out --publicly-- for the suffrage for black soldiers, because his great --political-- skill told him that the time was right.

It was a direct result of this speech, and this position, that Booth shot him.

President Lincoln, besides ordering the army (note that this is only a few months after the EP) to use black soldiers more vigorously, made many public speeches to prepare the people for the idea of black suffrage.

"When you give the Negro these rights," he [Lincoln] said, "when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood...By the close of the war, Lincoln was reccomending commissioning black officers in the regiments, and one actually rose to become a major before it was over. At the end of 1863, more than a hundred thousand had enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, and in his message to Congress the president reported, "So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any." When some suggested in August 1864 that the Union ought to offer to help return runaway slaves to their masters as a condition for the South's laying down its arms, Lincoln refused even to consider the question.

"Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?" he retorted. "Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, or any incoming administration can save the Union." To others he said it even more emphatically. "This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it."

--"Lincoln's Men" pp 163-64 by William C. Davis

Lincoln's sense of fairness made him seek to extend the blessings of citizenship to everyone who served under the flag.

His great political skill made him realize that blacks --were--not-- leaving -- he played that card and no one was biting, black or white. That being the case, he knew he had to prepare for the future, and that future involved full rights for blacks.

Walt

Consider, also, that nearly all societies with slavery managed to abolish the evil institution, at about the same time as the American Civil War commenced, without the immense loss of life and blood, presumably spent so as to abolish slavery.

That is exactly what makes the so-called CSA so egregious. The secessionists were swimming strongly against the tide of the times.

They were --determined-- to establish a society BASED on slavery. They made it very plain.

The problem the slave power had with President Lincoln was that he was not willing to countenance slavery being expanded into the territories. That was enough to set off the slave power.

What the slave power took exception to (and this is plain in their secession documents) was the fact that people in the north were becoming more and more uncomfortable with slavery. Northern states had passed personal liberty laws. They had assisted escaped slaves. They had resisted slave catchers come north to return escaped slaves to their masters. And these actions the slave power found unacceptable. Yancey, one of the main workers in destroying the Democratic Party to ensure the election of Lincoln, didn't want northerners to be bothered by the stench of his negroes. He was glad to forestall that -- by breaking up the government of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Jackson.

Robert. B. Rhett:

"The one great evil from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The Government of the United States is no longer the government of a confederate republic, but of a consolidated democracy. The Southern States now stand exactly in the same position toward the Northern States that our ancestors in the colonies did toward Great Britain.

Thus the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government, and the people of the Southern States are compelled to meet the very despotism their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776.

"The Union of the Constitution was a Union of slaveholding States. It rests on Slavery, by prescribing a representation in Congress for three-fifths of our slaves. There is nothing in the proceedings of the Convention which framed the Constitution to show that the Southern States would have formed any other union; and still less that they would have formed a union with more powerful non-slaveholding States, having a majority in both branches of the Legislature of the Government. They were guilty of no such folly.

As separate, independent States in Convention, we made the Constitution of the United States with them; and as separate, independent States, each State acting for itself, we adopted it."

This last is not correct. The sovereignty of the United States rests upon the people, not the states, but you get the point.

The slave power was determined to protect and even extend slavery.

The so-called CSA was an empire for slavery.

Walt

One would suppose these remarks would generate a serious and very visible public debate about the man. Yet we have, instead, mostly laudatory works such as William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues (Knopf, 2002) and Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None (HarperTrade, 1993), not to mention Carl Sandberg's Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and the War Years (Harcourt Brace, 1953).

Rightly so. Anyone who considers the whole record will revere and admire Lincoln if they are not totally partisan.

Here is a short segment of Sandburg's Lincoln:

"Lincoln had dignity in his mild-toned refusal of medidation by European nations, in silence as to the Trent affair. The [London] Spectator continued" "He is not malignant against foreign countries; on the contrary, thinks they have behaved rather better than he expected. No power in Europe can take offense at the wording of the [12/01/62] Message, nor can anyone say that the Republic bends to dictation, or craves in any undignified way for foreign forbearance. The words might have been more elegant, bur the astutest diplomatist could have accomplished no more, and might, perhaps, have shown a reticence less complete."

The gist of the message was epitomized: "Mr. Lincoln has from the first explained that he is the exponent of the national will. He has not merely recognized it. Amidst a cloud of words and phrases, which, often clever, are always too numerous, a careful observer may detect two clear and definite thoughts. 1. The President will assent to no peace upon any terms which imply a dissolution of the Union. 2. He holds that the best reconstruction will be that which is accompanied by measures for the final extinction of slavery." '

In the President's discussions of peace, said the Spectator, "He expresses ideas, which, however quaint, have nevertheless a kind of dreamy vastness not without its attraction. The thoughts of the man are too big for his mouth." He was saying that a nation can be divided but "the earth abideth forever," that a generation could be crushed but geography dictated that the Union could not be sundered. As to the rivers and mountains, "all are better than one or either, and all of right belong to this people and their successors forever." No possible severing of the land but would multiply and not mitigate the evils among the American States.

"It is an oddly worded argument," said the Spectator, "the earth being treated as If it were a living creature, an Estate of the Republic with an equal vote on its destiny." In the proposals for gradual emancipated compensation there was magnitude: "Mr. Lincoln has still the credit of having been first among American statesmen to rise to the situation, to strive that reconstruction shall not mean a new lease for human bondage." The President's paragraph was quoted having the lines; "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation," as though this had the attractive "dreamy vastness" that brought from the English commentator the abrupt sentence "The thoughts of the man are too big for his mouth."

Greeley and others could not resist the impact of some judgments pronounced on Lincoln abroad. Greeley did not accept these judgments. He questioned them sharply. He saw, however, that they had significance and they were of historic quality. Under the heading "Mr. Lincoln in Europe" the New York Tribune of January 10, 1863, reprinted from the Edinburgh Mercury:

“In Mr. Lincoln’s message, we appreciate the calm thoughtfulness so different from the rowdyism we have been accustomed to receive from Washington. He is strong in the justice his cause and the power of his people. He speaks without acerbity even of the rebels who have brought so much calamity upon the country, but we believe that if the miscreants of the Confederacy -were brought to him today, Mr. Lincoln would bid them depart and try to be better and braver men in the future. When we recollect the raucous hate in this country toward the Indian rebels, "we feel humiliated that this 'rail splitter' from Illinois should show himself so superior to the mass of monarchical statesmen.

"Mr. Lincoln's brotherly kindness, truly father of his country, kindly merciful, lenient even to a fault, is made the sport and butt of all the idle literary buffoons of England. The day will come when the character and career of Abraham Lincoln will get justice in this country and his assailants will show their shame for the share they took in lampooning so brave and noble a man, who in a fearful crisis possessed his soul in patience, trusting in God. ‘Truly’, Mr. Lincoln speaks, 'the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.' There is little doubt what the verdict of future generations will be of Abraham Lincoln.

"Before two years of his administration has been completed, he has reversed the whole constitutional attitude of America on the subject of Slavery; he has saved the territories from the unhallowed grasp of the slave power; he has purged the accursed institution from the Congressional District; he has hung a slave trader in New York, the nest of slave pirates; he has held out the right hand of fellowship to the negro Republicans of Liberia and Hayri; he has joined Great Britain in endeavoring to sweep the slave trade from the coast of Africa! There can be no doubt of the verdict of posterity on such acts as these.

Within the light of the 'fiery trial' of which Mr. Lincoln speaks, another light shines clear and refulgent—the torch of freedom—to which millions of poor slaves now look with eager hope.

At home and abroad judgments came oftener that America had at last a President who was All-American. He embodied his country in that he had no precedents to guide his footsteps; he was not one more individual of a continuing tradition, with the dominant lines of the mold already cast for him by Chief Magistrates who had gone before. Webster, Calhoun, and Clay conformed to a classicism of the school of the English gentleman, as did perhaps all the Presidents between Washington and Lincoln, save only Andrew Jackson.

The inventive Yankee, the Western frontiersman and pioneer, the Kentuckian of laughter and dreams, had found blend in one man who was the national head. In the "dreamy vastness" noted by the London Spectator, in the pith of the folk words "The thoughts of the man are too big for his mouth," was the feel of something vague that ran deep in American hearts, that hovered close to a vision for which men would fight, struggle, and die, a grand though blurred chance that Lincoln might be leading them toward something greater than they could have believed might come true.

Also around Lincoln gathered some of the hope that a democracy can choose a man, set him up high with power and honor, and the very act does something to the man himself, raises up new gifts, modulations, controls, outlooks, wisdoms, inside the man, so that he is something else again than he was before they sifted him out and anointed him to take an oath and solemnly sign himself for the hard and terrible, eye-filling and center-staged, role of Head of the Nation.

To be alive for the work he must carry in his breast Cape Cod, the Shenandoah, the Mississippi, the Gulf, the Rocky Mountains, the Sacramento, the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, their dialects and shibboleths. He must be instinct with the regions of corn, textile mills, cotton, tobacco, gold, coal, zinc, iron.

He would be written as a Father of his People if his record ran well, one whose heart beat with understanding of the many who came to the Executive Mansion, wore its thresholds, nicked the banisters, smoothed the doorknobs, and made vocal their wants and offerings.

In no one of the thirty-one rooms of the White House was Lincoln at home.

Back and forth in this house strode phantoms—red platoons of boys vanished into the war—thin white-spoken ghosts of women who would never again hold those boys in their arms—they made a soft moaning the imagination could hear in the dark night and the gray dawn.

To think incessantly of blood and steel, steel and blood, the argument without end by the mouths of brass cannon, of a mystic cause carried aloft and sung on dripping and crimson bayonet points—to think so and thus across nights and months folding up into years, was a wearing and a grinding that brought questions. What is this teaching and who learns from it and where does it lead? "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it."

Beyond the black smoke lay what salvations and jubilees? Death was in the air. So was birth. What was dying no man was knowing. What was being born no man could say.

The dew came on the White House lawn and the moonlight spread lace of white films in the night and the syringa and the bridal wreath blossomed and the birds fluttered in the bushes and nested in the sycamore and the veery thrush fluted with never a weariness. The war drums rolled and the telegraph clicked off mortality lists, now a thousand, now ten thousand in a day. Yet there were moments when the processes of men seemed to be only an evil dream and justice lay in deeper transitions than those wrought by men dedicated to kill or be killed."

--Abraham Lincoln, The War Years, Vol. II, pp.331-333, by Carl Sandburg

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