Political Agitation Quotes
Commenting on student demonstrations protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee:
Note the perception of Davis, typical of Southerners at the time, that Southerners were being excluded from California. The logic was this: California had many opportunities in land, gold, and other natural resources. Since California had a Constitutional provision against slavery, no Southerner could enter the new state with his slaves without fear of their being set free. If Southerners bought land or wanted to hunt for gold, they could not bring their slaves to do the heavy work. Therefore, they were excluded from the economic growth of the state. The idea of the whites doing the heavy work themselves of traveling without their family slaves was so foreign to the aristocratic planter class, that it was never considered by them as a possibility. Therefore, they were excluded. However, many of the lower class Southerners of all races saw great opportunities in California where they could compete on an equal footing even though they had no slaves or land.
This commission was the intellectual forerunner of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and McCarthyism. Metternich called a conference of the heads of all the German states to deal with what they perceived as a dangerous liberalism enveloping German society. Metternich did not personally draft all the resolutions but he controlled the conclave and all the resolutions which are usually ascribed to him.
What America just could not believe that American Negroes were not satisfied with their second class status. So any organized Negro unrest must be caused by un-American and foreign influences or those of radicals like Socialists. The Socialists were among the first organized political groups to condemn the racism and discrimination of the day. Later, even at the crux of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, most Southerners maintained that all the dissatisfaction and unrest of Negroes was the result of “agitators,” “foreigners,” “socialists,” and “communists.”
The major police union in NYC. The Mayor had run on a campaign of police reform with Lynch one of his most virulent political enemies. The killer who came to New York was very disturbed over the spate of police killings of unarmed Black boys and young men for which there were no indictments or other actions of accountability. One of these was a homicide committed by a New York police officer who, against Police regulations used a choke hold on victim while 4 other officers were restraint him as he choked to death. There were no charges files, even after the coroner had declared the death a homicide. There were major demonstrations and protests in New York and elsewhere and the Mayor had defended the right of citizens to peacefully protest, Lynch’s “logic” was that the mayor’s softness against demonstrations against the police encouraged the Baltimore man to come to New York and murder the 2 police officers. The Mayors clear and unmistakable disapproval of the violence against police {642497} somehow was taken as the opposite by Lynch and other New York police officers.
Americans were by no means united in wanting to take up arms against Britain. Relatively few of the loyalist quotations have come down to us, but here is one. It also illustrates why some Americans wanted complete independence: So that they could escape their debts to English merchants. Most however had more noble and unselfish motives. As a matter of fact, the American Revolution is unusual in the sense that there were so many men of substance who sacrificed much of their material wealth for the American ideal. There were also the rogues and opportunists as Galloway describes.
The bitter partisanship of the time was as intense as any in our history. Jefferson was attacked more frequently and more virulently than even William Clinton. Further, there were still major issues of Congressional vs. Presidential power, and there were those who believed the President should not at all concern himself with the legislative process but should merely carry out those laws that Congress passed.
