Mark Steyn Quotes
When is the Democratic Party going to apologize for being the biggest slave-holding-supporting institution on the planet and sticking with racism for the century after the abolition of slavery?
Steyn, Mark. The Undocumented Mark Steyn. Regnery Publishing, 2014.
As a young boy, Moyers lived and went to school in Texas where the state has control over all the schools’ curricula and slavery was taught about with little reality.
This newspaper editorial has historical importance for two reasons. First, it is yet another proof that the sole reason for southern secession was slavery. Second, note the implication that Lincoln had Negro ancestry. As that could be the only reason that he would hold his views on slavery. This disreputable tactic of slandering opponents who hold different views have extended to German ancestry in WWI, Catholic religion, communist affiliation, and in one of the more recent examples, the accusation—believed by a number of Americans, that President Obama was a secret Muslim.
This quotation is very important for in the 20th century Southern revisionists made a major effort to ennoble the Confederate cause by claiming that Slavery and the desire to keep Blacks in bondage and unequal was just of byproduct of the reason for secession—States Rights and the decentralization of government. Many of the school history books were changed to reflect this claim. However, each of the seceding states left a legislative record of secession and the reasons for it. In all cases, Slavery and the preservation of Slavery in the South was the central and in most cases the only reason stated. In this case, Texas made its reasons clear. There was nothing noble therein but racism and racial exploitation.
See the Vermont Constitution for another variant of how slavery was abolished: {616994}
This is a particularly memorable quotation for several reasons. First the address was given by a young senior student who would later be a member of Congress, a effective abolitionist, and the author of various pieces of legislation that vexed the South. What is even more memorable is that the oration was given at an Ivy League College Official Graduation. The Ivy league schools, despite their reputation for intellectual freedom, generally were very adverse to any discussion about the slavery issue as it would cause too much passionate contention. See {621346} for an example at Harvard. In addition, Brown University was in Providence RI, where the economy depended in substantial part on slavery. The Co-Founder of Brown was himself a slave trader {622028}. This was one of the early American anti-slavery orations.
The Baptist Churches of America were split asunder by the slavery issue. Wayland, who represented both the Northern abolitionist-leaning Baptist Churches and the Southern pro slavery churches, tried to forge a middle ground whereby slavery would end by the moral enlightenment of man and his love for fellow man as opposed to by legislation or economic pressure. He successfully predicted the outcome of the conflict except for one error he made. The conflict DID end slavery. The Baptist Church finally split into southern and northern wings in 1845. To this day, the Southern Church is extremely conservative, and fundamentalist; the Northern, very liberal and modern.
The time was the mid 18th Century.
This quotation illustrates the strong abolitionist tendency in the Ohio Territory. Under this clause, escaped slaves from Southern states would not be returned by the state authorities. Even more insulting to the slave enthusiasts of the South, if a Southerner brought any slaves into Ohio with them as was common for Southerners traveling with their personal slaves or horse team drivers, those slaves would be free. An interesting aspect of this clause of the Ohio Constitution was that the beginning was, word for word, copied from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. See {618100}.
A few years later he had a clearer idea of what was to be done. However, the additional factor of the Civil War played a big part in driving his Emancipation Proclamation. See {609360}
The Republicans had broken off from the Whig Party and started a new one attracting some liberal Democrats also. The Republican Party described themselves as “radicals” and argued for major reform quickly.
Even before we had a Constitution there was major opposition to slavery. The “price” of the American Union was the acceptance of the slavery of the South. But the hypocrisy of a country based on liberty to allow and enforce slavery was not lost on the founding fathers. Ironically the abolitionists among the founding fathers were certain that they could persuade the Southern slaveholders of the error of slavery in a few years and things would be set right in the land. Even George Washington {630626}, and Thomas Jefferson and some other slaveowners at the time wished to see its abolition. Slaveholding Southern Founding Fathers in general were so wary of the abolitionists that they achieved structural, disproportionate, power in the new Constitution to ward off the abolitionists attempts to reform slavery.
Washington was from Virginia, the largest of the slave states, and he himself owned slaves. In his will he emancipated all his slaves. Most of his fellow Southern Slave owners however not only disagreed about the abolition of slavery but were adamant that slavery spread so that the abolitionists never attain a majority.
The Union troops had just been routed at Bull Run. Many in the North thought that the war would be a short one with little disruption of loss of life. Here Norton, like so many others, provided a a more realistic assessment. Also note the reference to “barbarism” in the South, When the Union was formed, the Southern states were not as well developed as the North from an industrial, educational or cultural perspective. There were vestiges of aristocracy, crude law enforcement, and much more poverty (Virginia excepted) than in the North. Most Northerners thought that the South would reform—modernize and become more like the North, but instead the gulf became greater as the North itself developed and changed rapidly while the South was mired in its traditions with their aristocracy gaining more political, economic and cultural control. This attitude of Northern superiority, objectively valid though it may have been, was sorely resented by the South and this resentment has persisted into relatively modern times.
Jefferson’s views, actions and inactions regarding slavery are very complex and contradictory. This quotation is one example of the many statements and activities to end slavery. Yet he never freed his own slaves (as did George Washington) and he fathered a child by one of his slaves with no attempt at freeing even her and the child. The Andrew Dickson White article is one of the first serious studies of the Jefferson contradictions regarding slavery.
Mark Steyn is a Canadian conservative author. He has written several books, including the New York Times bestsellers America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It and After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. He has guest-hosted the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, as well as Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, on which he regularly appears as a guest and fill-in host when Tucker Carlson is away.
