American History

Over a more than one-hundred year period, the Southern states of the Union faced off repeatedly with the broader federal legislative and judicial branches over the issue of race and the constitutional protection for states rights. First the legal status and later the treatment of blacks in the South consistently were covered under the larger heading, in the minds of Southern lawmakers, as a matter of their rights as sovereign states as laid out by the Constitution. In 1837, 1866, and 1956, Southern lawmakers presented an essentially standard message of states rights in an evolution of topics which are revealing in understanding the motivation behind their resistance to civil rights as well, as a reflection of the time period itself and how it related to the idea of civil rights. In each instance, whether presented by John C. Calhoun, Alexander Stephens, or a group of Southern Senators, the issue is looked at from the perspective and interests of the white population, and supported with fictional imaginings of the lives of those being oppressed, the lawmakers protestations and assertions for state rights do little cover the underlying racial prejudices that fuel these confrontations.

In his 1837 address to the Senate, John C. Calhoun, argues from a position predating the end of slavery and the destructiveness of the Civil War. Important to his perspective is the still legal presence of slavery as an institution not only in Southern society but in commercial and political relationships. However, in his rhetoric there is a sense of things to come, as represents the mindset that helped to fuel and push forward the secession of the Southern U.S. states. Calhoun knows that the outcry by abolitionists will only become amplified as time goes by, A large portion of the Northern states believed slavery to be a sin, and would consider it as an obligation of conscience to abolish it if they should feel themselves in anyway responsible for its continuance.  This mention of the different ideologies between Northern and Southern states is important in establishing the mindset of Calhoun and his likeminded Southern lawmakers and constituents in their feeling of being separate from their Northern neighbors. In mentality, at least, the secession has already begun, and in the sentiment of Calhouns message of the Southern states constitutional rights to sovereignty there lies the stubborn retention of regional concepts of race, We of the South will not, cannot, surrender or institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both.

Perhaps one of the most important parts of Calhouns speech in terms of its relation to the successive opinions of Southern lawmakers in 1866 and 1956 is the manner in which he lays the ground work for the talking points connecting states rights and the status of blacks in Southern society. Each of the men, from Calhoun to Stephens to Ervin and Thurmond, use their interpretation of black life as part of their argument for the right of the state to have full jurisdiction in the area of racial equality whether it be the basic rights of a freedom, the right to vote or own land, or the right to equal and integrated education. In each instance, the suffering of slavery, the marginalization of a population unable to vote because of racism and violence against them, and the inability to be recognized as simply American rather than Colored and afforded the same rights and freedom of interaction with society given to whites are not described. Instead, Calhoun describes slavery as moral good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa  attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.  What he fails to address, of course, is the stereotype and hundreds of years of prejudice and white supremacy that allows this to be a fact to Calhoun. If one race is to base its entire understanding of another race on ideas of inferiority and savagery, than the developing relationship between the two races including their history will be peppered with facts founded in fiction. This fiction and the faint cover of states rights that became stronger and stronger with the events leading up to the secession, combined to create a parallel to human history. It was the strength of that fiction and the bitterness created by the defeat of the Confederacy and the ensuing Reconstruction that helped to further entrench the racism of Calhoun, while shoring up the rhetoric of federal and state powers as defined by the U.S. Constitution.

Alexander Stephens, fresh from the devastating experience of the Civil War and the beginning stages of Reconstruction, speaks from a more humbled and political level. Unlike Calhoun, he is not anxious to draw attention to the racial problems that persisted in the South instead attempting to place the secession of the Southern states wholly in the realm of states constitutional rights rather than the issue of race and slavery, They did what they did, believing it was best for the protection of constitutional liberty  they resorted to secession with a view of more securely maintaining these principles. However, even in his well-crafted answers that attempt to show Confederate states actions as defensive against the usurpation of their constitutional rights as states, there is no denying the issue of race and rights for blacks is still an issue for many. Presented prior to the adoption of the 14th Amendment, Stephens questioned the continued issue of constitutionality of the actions of the Union during the Reconstruction, particularly in the issue of blacks proposed right to vote, I do not think, therefore, that the people of that State, while they are disposed, as I believe, earnestly to deal fairly, justly and generously with the freedmen, would be willing to consent to a change in the Constitution that would give Congress jurisdiction over the question of suffrage. In addition, while Stephens consents to his own belief that the abolishment of slavery was for the common good, he stops short of fully accepting the right of the Union to impose the ideology of the abolitionist on the Southern states and still contends, I do not think there is any constitutional power on the part of the government to have enacted as a condition precedent to their restoration under the Constitution.

Stephens illustrates the deep divide over the issue of race, without the rhetoric of the gentle master as shown in Calhouns defense of the practice of slavery, instead perhaps sensing the turn in the national tide and the position of the South he chose instead to appeal to a broader, less tangible idea of justice as enshrined in the Constitution. In the end, of course, freedmen were given the right to vote and with successive judgments by state and federal courts, civil rights were expanded upon. However, as shown in the judgment of Plessy vs. Ferguson, the application and interpretations of equality were still limited by the racial ideology of white supremacy as first expressed by Calhoun. In their ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court described the purpose of the 14th amendment to enforce the idea of racial equality in the eyes of the law but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. In their ruling in 1896 that declared the concept of separate but equal was keeping with the ideas lain down with the 14th Amendment and the Constitution itself, the Court played directly into the hands of bigots and white supremacists who wished for a continued distinction between races. No longer slaves, the rhetoric of racism shown in Calhouns speech now incorporates the changes of America and the Constitution. The once hated 14th Amendment, combined with the ruling of Plessy vs. Ferguson, allowed Southern lawmakers in 1956 to air an old and new perspective on racial equality.

Ninety years later, as finally social equality was coming into the modern era with the Supreme Courts 1954 ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education and the negation of the separate but equal precedent set by Plessy vs. Ferguson, Senator Sam J. Ervin and his fellow southern lawmakers once more stood on the floor of the Senate. As with Calhoun, they came to decry the violation of their state rights framed in the idea of the Constitution but revealed in their rhetoric and the rebuttals from Morse and Humphrey the same resistance to civil rights. More like Calhoun than Stephens in many respects, the Senators Declaration of Constitutional Principles and the supportive speech by Senator Strom Thurmond revealed the age old racial legend and lie that blacks are happier in their inequality. Thurmonds debate against the ruling, more so than that presented by Smith, shows the archaic ideas of race and civil rights that prompted the anger of the Southern senators. As with Calhouns enemy the abolitionist, Thurmond sees the threat as coming from outside the South, Except for these troublemakers, I believe out people of both races in South Carolina would have continued to progress harmoniously together.  Like Calhoun, Thurmond is fulfilling the role of dominant white male, speaking of racial conditions for which he has no understanding. He fails to see the underlying issue of equality as the main issue at hand and instead defends the Negro schools are better than the schools of white children. Yet the Negroes continue to seek admission to schools for the white race  He wrongly sees the issue as a threat to white purity and supremacy, calling white in the South the greatest minority in this Nation.  In this and Thurmonds fear of racial mixing emerges as the center of what he believes to be the issue rather than the true nature of equality that the Court hoped to define. The reactions of senators Morse and Humphrey illustrate how thinly veiled this racism proved to be as well as the weakening character of the Southern senators debate for state rights as a cover for the ingrained prejudice in Southern race relations.

Overall, each instance in history where the issue between states rights and civil rights have met on the floor of the Senate or before Congressional Committee, has illustrated the changes of the nations understanding of equal rights. From Calhouns speech on the growth of the abolition movement to Stephens testimony following the defeat of the Confederacy and more importantly the institution of slavery, and finally to the beginning  of the modern era of Civil Rights, there has run a similar thread of the desire to retain the status quo out of unequal concepts of race. The idea of states rights versus those of the federal government in determining state laws, is simply a flashpoint that has continued to have relevance in arguing a minority viewpoint that in itself is at odds with the very tenets of freedom and equality by which the nation was founded and the Constitution written. All three illustrate, that while certain parts of society may resist the changes of time, the ability of the law to adhere not to popular opinion but instead to the changing view of justice is not only within the limits but also is an obligation of the courts.