Happy Birthday, Abie Baby
This month has two holidays: Valentine's Day (which needs no introduction), and President's Day. This last is the gummint's attempt to streamline the days they allow their peons to actually stay home and revitalize themselves. Although President's Day was established in 1971 as a way to combine and honor both Lincoln and Washington in one day with the generic title "President's Day," it actually dishonors the two men who previously were celebrated on their own merits. Also, it deprived millions of schoolchildren the chance to have two days off in February, after suffering through the winter doldrums of the post-Christmas hangover called January. Now everyone just gets the third Monday in February off, as opposed to February 12th and 22nd. For a county that's so "patriotic," you'd think they'd keep these holidays the way they were. You can tell these were once major holidays if you do any research into old calendars, newspapers, etc., or just watch Bing Crosby in "Holiday Inn." It's a nice, if dated, movie. You can thrill to all the holiday musical numbers, including "White Christmas." The Lincoln song extols that wonderful man called Abe, and notes that the "darkies" were thrilled by what he did for them. Charming.
Although I was still in elementary school after 1971, my school district still gave us both holidays off. I remember my teacher did cutouts of Lincoln and Washington to post around the classroom, and we received rudimentary history lessons about both men. My memory's a bit hazy, but I think as part of our curriculum, we did silhouettes. The teacher had us come up one by one and stand in the shadow of a lamp or some such strong light, and she'd trace our outlines on black construction paper. She cut each one out, and we had our very own silhouette. I think my mom still has mine; I'll have to look at it again someday. I must have been about seven or eight.
As for our sixteenth president, what really bugs me is how certain irresponsible politicians collectively called "Republicans" like to showcase Lincoln as a prime example of how committed they are to Civil Rights. "Why," they crow, "our first Republican president was so committed to Civil Rights, he freed the slaves!" They trot out Lincoln every chance they get, trying to cover up the fact that that was the high-water mark as far as the Republicans and civil rights were concerned. Oh, sure, there was Reconstruction, but this was carried out in spite of things, and ended with a thud at the close of the 1876 election. The GOP wasn't founded primarily as a bastion of freedom, nor with the intention of promoting racial equality. Instead, the first Republicans sought abolition as a means to promote free labor, rather than as some moral obligation on the part of the nation. Eric Foner covers this well in _Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men_, his discussion of the early ideology of the Republican Party, and what this meant in the immediate pre-Civil War climate. Republican policies after Reconstruction focused largely on pro-business policies (sound familiar?), culminating in the presidency of William McKinley during the 1890s. If you really want to understand how we got to where we are today, study the Robber Baron era: as George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
The Republicans were vaguely pro-civil rights in a passive sort of way, but didn't really do anything to prevent the nadir of black America during the post-Plessy v. Ferguson years; as the civil rights years of the 1950s and '60s passed, it was increasingly the Democratic Party that changed course. I've often thought Lyndon Johnson was the best post-WWII president we've had, in terms of domestic affairs. LBJ was a New Dealer, a successor to FDR. Since then, the Republicans, starting in 1968 with Nixon's famous "Southern Strategy," have been co-opting the old racist polemics and policies that the Democrats once held. In a recent meeting with the Black Congressional Caucus, our "president" admitted he didn't know anything about the upcoming renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This is just the tip of the iceberg, really...
That's not to say that Lincoln was some sort of saint where blacks were concerned. In 1862, Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley, and said in part, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." For Lincoln, dealing with slavery came second to holding the country together. As for the Emancipation Proclamation, it was a political cover-your-ass document: the slaves in the South weren't freed, because Lincoln had no control over that region. The slaves in the North weren't freed, because by the time of the Civil War, there weren't any slaves left in those states. The border states, like Maryland, were the only areas where the Emancipation Proclamation had much heft to begin with. Both Lincoln and Kennedy are remembered for their stance on civil rights/slavery/black issues, but the real progress happened after their deaths: the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and Reconstruction in Lincoln's case, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in JFK's.
Lincoln can and should be remembered for a lot of things. But I really wish that two things would happen. One is that the original holidays be restored, so we can remember and celebrate Lincoln on his own (not to mention more downtime for everybody- really!), and that politicians of all stripes would shut up about Lincoln. The Republicans should stop trying to act like they're the *real* best friends the blacks have, just because Lincoln did this and did that (without considering the actual historical/political realities of the 1860s!), and playing a flim-flam game about their so-called "big tent." The Democrats should stop taking blacks and other minorities for granted, because, well, golly, we do everything the Republicans can't/won't/don't! I'd prefer to see people come together to remember Lincoln for what he *did* do: save the United States from balkanizing, write some of the best political/professional speeches ever, kept the North together at a time when there wasn't necessarily a universal consensus as to What To Do, and provide us with the opportunity to see hack actors on car dealership TV ads hawking mid-year auto sales, with 0% financing until Washington's Birthday! Which is when our next sale is!
Not to mention one of the best memorials on the National Mall in D.C. Not too bad for one of the antebellum period's best railroad lawyers. Happy Birthday, Abie, Baby, Happy Birthday to You. Yeah!
Although I was still in elementary school after 1971, my school district still gave us both holidays off. I remember my teacher did cutouts of Lincoln and Washington to post around the classroom, and we received rudimentary history lessons about both men. My memory's a bit hazy, but I think as part of our curriculum, we did silhouettes. The teacher had us come up one by one and stand in the shadow of a lamp or some such strong light, and she'd trace our outlines on black construction paper. She cut each one out, and we had our very own silhouette. I think my mom still has mine; I'll have to look at it again someday. I must have been about seven or eight.
As for our sixteenth president, what really bugs me is how certain irresponsible politicians collectively called "Republicans" like to showcase Lincoln as a prime example of how committed they are to Civil Rights. "Why," they crow, "our first Republican president was so committed to Civil Rights, he freed the slaves!" They trot out Lincoln every chance they get, trying to cover up the fact that that was the high-water mark as far as the Republicans and civil rights were concerned. Oh, sure, there was Reconstruction, but this was carried out in spite of things, and ended with a thud at the close of the 1876 election. The GOP wasn't founded primarily as a bastion of freedom, nor with the intention of promoting racial equality. Instead, the first Republicans sought abolition as a means to promote free labor, rather than as some moral obligation on the part of the nation. Eric Foner covers this well in _Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men_, his discussion of the early ideology of the Republican Party, and what this meant in the immediate pre-Civil War climate. Republican policies after Reconstruction focused largely on pro-business policies (sound familiar?), culminating in the presidency of William McKinley during the 1890s. If you really want to understand how we got to where we are today, study the Robber Baron era: as George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
The Republicans were vaguely pro-civil rights in a passive sort of way, but didn't really do anything to prevent the nadir of black America during the post-Plessy v. Ferguson years; as the civil rights years of the 1950s and '60s passed, it was increasingly the Democratic Party that changed course. I've often thought Lyndon Johnson was the best post-WWII president we've had, in terms of domestic affairs. LBJ was a New Dealer, a successor to FDR. Since then, the Republicans, starting in 1968 with Nixon's famous "Southern Strategy," have been co-opting the old racist polemics and policies that the Democrats once held. In a recent meeting with the Black Congressional Caucus, our "president" admitted he didn't know anything about the upcoming renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This is just the tip of the iceberg, really...
That's not to say that Lincoln was some sort of saint where blacks were concerned. In 1862, Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley, and said in part, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." For Lincoln, dealing with slavery came second to holding the country together. As for the Emancipation Proclamation, it was a political cover-your-ass document: the slaves in the South weren't freed, because Lincoln had no control over that region. The slaves in the North weren't freed, because by the time of the Civil War, there weren't any slaves left in those states. The border states, like Maryland, were the only areas where the Emancipation Proclamation had much heft to begin with. Both Lincoln and Kennedy are remembered for their stance on civil rights/slavery/black issues, but the real progress happened after their deaths: the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and Reconstruction in Lincoln's case, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in JFK's.
Lincoln can and should be remembered for a lot of things. But I really wish that two things would happen. One is that the original holidays be restored, so we can remember and celebrate Lincoln on his own (not to mention more downtime for everybody- really!), and that politicians of all stripes would shut up about Lincoln. The Republicans should stop trying to act like they're the *real* best friends the blacks have, just because Lincoln did this and did that (without considering the actual historical/political realities of the 1860s!), and playing a flim-flam game about their so-called "big tent." The Democrats should stop taking blacks and other minorities for granted, because, well, golly, we do everything the Republicans can't/won't/don't! I'd prefer to see people come together to remember Lincoln for what he *did* do: save the United States from balkanizing, write some of the best political/professional speeches ever, kept the North together at a time when there wasn't necessarily a universal consensus as to What To Do, and provide us with the opportunity to see hack actors on car dealership TV ads hawking mid-year auto sales, with 0% financing until Washington's Birthday! Which is when our next sale is!
Not to mention one of the best memorials on the National Mall in D.C. Not too bad for one of the antebellum period's best railroad lawyers. Happy Birthday, Abie, Baby, Happy Birthday to You. Yeah!
posted by Mr. Sandman | 7:03 PM
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