Those who fail to understand history are likely to repeat it.
It is well to remember which American political party supported slavery and started the civil war. That is not the point of this piece, however. It is the stridency, the rejection of all but their own beliefs to the point of armed conflict. That is what these two gentlemen embody. Crazy stridency. This country is built on compromise and common interests. Move away from those foundations and armed conflict is possible. These two gentlemen also represent the historically wrong assumption that the other side is weak. Weakened through democratic principles and processes that must be followed. In the same way the Southern Confederacy was defeated in 1865, so too will Democratic calls for violence and tolerance for violence in this modern age be defeated. Democrats should remember the state of the Southern Confederacy at the end of the civil war – totally ravaged and beaten – and the great cost in blood and treasure that the war demanded. I urge party leaders to turn back from crazy stridency.
Edmund Ruffin (January 5, 1794 – June 18, 1865) was a wealthy Virginia planter and slaveholder. In the last three decades before the American Civil War, his pro-slavery writings received more attention than his agricultural work. Ruffin staunchly advocated states’ rights and slavery, arguing for secession years before the Civil War, and became a political activist with the so-called Fire-Eaters. Ruffin is given credit for “firing the first shot of the war” at the Battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861 and fought as a Confederate soldier despite his advanced age. When the war ended in Southern defeat in 1865, he committed suicide rather than submit to “Yankee rule.”
John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina who served as the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. He is remembered for strongly defending slavery and for advancing the concept of minority states’ rights in politics. He did this in the context of protecting the interests of the white South when its residents were outnumbered by Northerners. He began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states’ rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. He saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South remaining in the Union. His beliefs and warnings heavily influenced the South’s secession from the Union in 1860–1861.