Chaim & Civil War Journalism

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth-century. Written in the popularly-read sentimentalist style of Charles Dickens and others of his contemporaries, the book was voraciously read throughout the English-speaking world and largely turned the public opinion against slavery. However, the book is rife with stereotyped depictions of Black folk. This is just one indicator of the racism that runs as an undercurrent within this book. Even the foreword of the novel begins by describing the slaves as being of “an exotic race, wose ancestors, born beneath a tropic sun, brought with them, and perpetuated to their descendant, a character so essentially unlike the hard and dominant Anglo-Saxon race.”That might come as something of a surprise to some readers, seeing that we often like to think that abolitionists were consistently on the right side of history. This book should serve as a wake-up call that just because someone may have good intentions, their actions may run with a strong undercurrent of racism that plays into the system they hope to work against. 

Among the other instances of explicit racism in the novel is the character of Black Sam. He is described as being “about three shades blacker than any other son of ebony on the place.” He is characterized as a kind of intellectual, a philosopher, but in a satirical kind of way. When Eliza runs away, we are told that he “was revolving the matter profoundly in all its phases and bearings, with a comprehensiveness of vision and a strict look out to his own personal well-being, that would have done credit to any white patriot in Washington” (37). There is a kind of humor here, where the notion of black man being such an intellectual that he could be in Congress is treated as a joke, and not as a very real possibility. This book came out a time when one of the most gifted and celebrated orators of the day was Frederick Douglass, a man and former slave whose talent and intellectualism could have easily earned him a seat in Congress. Yet, the intellectualism of Black Sam is treated as a joke, and the notion of him in Washington is, to the writer, laughable. Later, as he continues to think on the matter of Eliza’s escape, the author becomes even more explicit about this nature of his, saying “Sam spoke like a philosopher, emphasizing this – as if he had had a large experience in different sorts of worlds, and therefore had come to his conclusions advisedly” (38). It is the “as if” part that chafes me terribly. Although I have no example to cite, I can only imagine that during this time, there were writers who were supporters of slavery who were drawing up comedic sketches of a “black Congress” and other such things to highlight how ridiculousness they view the notion that black folk could be equals with Anglo-Saxon folk. 

In this, Harriet Beecher Stowe seems to be playing on racist stereotypes, but not simply because she knew no better. She plays on them in a way that seems to specifically perpetuate the notion of black inferiority. 

Among the contentious issues surrounding the fight for civil rights is reparations. This would be some manner of monetary compensation for centuries of slavery, followed by a hundred years of Jim Crow and other forms of institutionalized racism. There are some out there who advocate very strongly for reparations, believing that they are the only way to make up for the generations of trauma caused by slavery. They cannot, but they can begin to make things right. Just as there are those who advocate strongly for reparations, there are those who deny this course of action. Some view reparations as a wholly new, radical issue heralded in along with other insidious and un-American ideals such as Critical Race Theory and anti-racism. Others criticize how feasible these reparations could even be; can America really afford to write out a check to every African-American currently living in the United States? Who is going to pay for that? 

However, even this debate is a cloistered one. In the early 19th-century, Congress instituted a “Gag Rule” prohibiting the discussion of slavery in the House of Representatives. Today, there is a similar Gag Rule surrounding reparations. During every session of Congress for twenty-five years, Congressman John Conyers Jr. presented HR 40, now known as The Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. This bill would authorize a congressional study of reparations, essentially giving the issue of slavery and it’s lingering after-effects for African Americans a hearing in the central legislative body of this nation. It has never made it out of the House, and was only in 2021 voted out of the Judiciary Committee. Regrettably, Conyers died in 2019. He never lived to see it come to pass. Three years later, it still has not.

The first argument that reparations are a new and radical idea are already based on a false premise. To compensate people formerly held in bondage has a long history, and “at the dawn of this country, black reparations were actively considered and often affected” (Coates). Even after the Civil War during the period of Reconstruction, activists, even some Confederate veterans, advocated for reparations as a stimulus to help repair the Southern economy. It never happened. In 1870, the Union pulled Federal troops out of the South, ushering in a century of mob-violence and Jim Crow that would create a kind of “second slavery” (Coates). Reparations have been lingering in the back of the American conciousness from the very beginning, paired with the ever present forces that the deeply-endemic system of chattel slavery has established here. 

To the latter point of how feasible reparations are, it is difficult to say. What should these reparations look like? One of the more recent advocates for reparations, Boris Bittker, described that “a rough price tag of reparations could be determined by multiplying the  number of African Americans in the population by the difference in white and black per capita income” (Coates). This then ushers in the inevitable follow-up question, who should that amount of reparations be payed to? When West Germany payed reparations for the Holocaust in 1952, they paid the sum directly to the State of Israel. In the case of reparations for slavery, this would be our country paying itself; there is no outside body to send the check to. 

I want to close by saying that I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that we should be putting our support behind the passage of HR 40. This is a way of me side-stepping the question of whether or not I support reparations (you might notice that this is a theme with my writings), but I think that the best step to start with is to put this issue to rest by giving it the hearing it deserves in Congress. From there, we can reckon with ourselves and our greatest evil, our greatest sin. From there, we may begin to make true reparations. For reparations are more than just a monetary pay-out, it must also be a kind of atonement.

The above-quoted line is taken from the very first sentence of a delightful little volume titled “A Young Folks’ History of the Civil War.” It was published sometime in the early 1880’s, when the majority of soldiers who partook in the titular conflict were still living. It is now two centuries later, and to make the claim that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War is typically met with resistance and argument from certain, peculiar corners. Let the argument be made again: slavery was the main cause of American Civil War. Slavery was the big question left unanswered at the founding of the nation. This left distinct halves of the country going in two different directions, creating the tension that would result in the American Civil War; the Northern states went in a radically more industrialized direction, relying more on immigrant labor than chattel slavery while the Southern states became even more deeply entrenched in their agrarian practices, furthering the need for a reliance on chattel slavery. As has been pointed out by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the leaders of the first slave states to secede from the Union were explicit in their defense of slavery. Coates cites the position of the State of Mississippi, in their declaration of secession from January of 1861,

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth” (Coates).

The admission that the decision to secede from the Union is “thoroughly identified witht he institution of slavery” is a telling one. The defense of slavery is what precipitated the secession and eventual Civil War. They knew it then when they seceded, and they knew it after. 

Even in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the notion that the debate over “The Slavery Question” had the potentiality to result in violence and bloodshed was not unusual. In the Seventh Lincoln-Douglas Debate on October 15th, 1858, Lincoln made this statement:

“Whenever the issue can be distinctly made, and all extraneous matter thrown out so that 

men can fairly see the real difference between the parties, this controversy will soon be 

settled, and it will be done peaceably, too. There will be no war, no violence” (194)

Alas, there was a war that was teeming with abundant violence. At this point in American history, where the Civil War was just over the horizon, the issue of slavery was treated as if it had the potentiality to result in war. Lincoln uses a lot of the same imagery and rhetorical devices that many abolitionist writers of the day had also used; liking slavery to a diseas, appealing to a sense of right-versus-wrong, and the religious appeal all make for great examples of this. Additionally, he includes the threat of war hanging over the country’s head like a Sword of Damocles.

There is a story often propogated around the Civil War, and especially the Confederacies “Lost Cause,” about how the war was over states’ rights and not slavery. What exactly are the states’ rights that would be so important as to cause half of the country to divorce itself from the other half? The answer is evidently the right to engage in the practice of chattel slavery. Were these rights being attacked? Lincoln was a vocally anti-slavery figure in contemporaneous politics, so his election would have been something that would have sparked fear that the so-called “right” to practice chattel slavery would be threatened by his administration. It is an understandable fear; in the mind of the agrarian Southerners, their economy would tank with the removal of their labor-force. 

The evidence is abundant, and the recognition is old, that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. The question that remains, and is certainly worth examination, is of how the notion became built into the minds of so many Americans, that this issue was not about slavery, but about states’ rights.

In June of 2020, while protests erupted across the United States following the murder of George Floyd by Mineanapolis police office Derek Chauvin, a statue of Winston Churchil erected in Parliament Square, London was defaced. This was part of a “Black Lives Matter” protest that was taking place in London at that time. The movement and it’s protests came to a head that summer, with protests raging both within and outside of the United States. On the front of the Churchill statue, black spray paint was used to write “CHURCHILL was a racist” underneath the name of the Prime Minister, with his engraved name being crossed out with spray paint. The first question may be: what does police brutality in the United States have to do with Great Britain? Why is Churchill a target of these protests, alongside figures like Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson?

With the aim of resolving some of these questions, The Open-Discourse Coalition organized a panel discussion on Churchill as a figure to be analyzed through the lens of racism and anti-racism, posing the question: “Is Churchill a Hero or a Colonialist?” Ultimately, it all boiled down to issues of racism regarding Churchill’s legacy, tied up with anti-fascism and imperialism. The participants of the panel discussion were from different fields and backgrounds; Larry P. Arnn, an American law professor who has devoted years to painstaking research into Churchill’s papers; Madhusree Mukerjee, an Indian-American journalist whose exploration of the origins of poverty in India led her to write a full-length book on Churchill’s policies towards India during the Second World War; and Sean McMeekin, an American historian whose writings on the Second World War provide a glimpse into Churchill’s brokering of peace during the last days of that war. The three were brought together, although not all of them in person, to provide their take on Churchill to see what the answer to the above question is, if there is such a concrete answer.

By the end of the panel discussion, the sharing of the three perspectives quickly devolved into a debate over and criticism of Mukerjee’s claim that Churchill was carrying out nothing short of genocide in his starvation policies towards India, resulting in the Great Famine of 1943. Arnn’s most central criticism was that he could nowhere find the quotes that Mukerjee was presenting. Arnn would be the first person to make that criticism, considering that, of all of the panelists, he is the one who has spent the most time going over Churchill’s papers. Already, credibility here lies with Arnn. The moment would be ripe for Mukerjee to counter with a direct quotation, citation, or some other such rebuttal to his point. However, repeatedly during this follow-up debate, Mukerjee responds with a simple “I suggest you read my book.” Arnn has admitted to having read some of it. However, it is a weak parry from Mukerjee. If she is really an expert on this topic, like Arnn claims to be on the life and legacy of Churchill, she should be able to respond in an appropriate argumentative manner. Yet, she holds her book up as a shield while never emerging from behind it to defend the claims she so brazenly makes. McMeekin stayed neutral during this debate; he is, after all, not an expert on Churchill.

Among the other claims about Churchill made by Mukerjee is the one that Churchill was irrational during the last days of the war, making rushed and frantic decisions. In essence, that he was not in his right mind for the kind leadership that was called for at that time. When approached after the panel discussion, Professor McMeeking responded to this claim. He believes that to say that Churchill was “irrational” during those last days of the war is an inaccurate way of presenting the facts. He believes that Churchill was frustrated and anxious, but was in no way irrational in his decision making at that time.