Ashcroft on American history

[Paul Finkelman]

Michael offers a good explanation about the past; but to continue to accept
these myths and to perpetuate them shows a level of blindness about history,
race, and the continuing trauma in America caused by slavery.  One would expect
holders of high office to do better!  The Southern
Partisan is a particularly pernicious publication, which not only glories in the
southern past, as it view that past, but also denigrates African-Americans (or
at least did in the one or two issues I looked at more than a decade ago);
Ashcroft of course comes from a state where more people fought for the United
States Army than the Confederate Army (as does Michael McConnell) and where
there are probably far more descendants of slaves than of Confederate
veterans.   Thus, a candidate need not be  wrapped in the Confederate Flag to
win office in that state.  McConnell's point seems to be that his comments were
made simply to get elected.  Now, assumigjn he knows enought history to know how
wrong his satements were, do we want to support people for high office who lie,
even about history, just to get elected?  On the other hand, if we do not
believe these are lies, then Ashcroft must believe them  My guess is he does
believe this view of history, that he has internalized  it and supports it.

I have just read a mss. about the implementation of voting rights in Georgia
since 1965 and was struck by the persistent and quite recent attempts to deprive
blacks of the ballot or to undermine the likelihood of blacks being elected to
office.  In the last election state police in Florida set up road blocks in at
least some black neighborhoods which black voters felt was intimidation.  It is
not that long ago (less than 35 years) that blacks were killed in the deep South
for even trying to vote or to register to vote; and whites were killed for
helping them register.  This remains part of the legacy of the civil war.  Thus,
it is indeed troubling that the person ultimately responsible for enforcing the
voting rights act and other civil rights legislation would in effect argue that
the wrong side won in the civil war, and by logical extention slavery was not
all that bad.

I shudder to think what former Senator Ashcroft's views are on reconstruction,
the 14th Amendment, or desregation, given his views on the Civil War and the
Confederacy.

These are issues that should go beyond partisan politics  There are many people
in the Republican party, including Michael McConnell, who obviously do not take
the position of Ashcroft on the Civil War, the slaveholding leaders of the
Confederacy, and by logical extention, the view that Reconstruction was also
wrong.  After all, if the wrong side one in the Civil War then Reconstruction
and the Amendments must also be wrong.    I think it is not unreasonable to
worry that a person with these views will be enforcing the civil rights laws.

Paul Finkelman

--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East Fourth Place
Tulsa, OK  74104

918-631-3706
Fax 918-631-2194

E-mail:  paul-finkelman at utulsa.edu




Michael McConnell wrote:

> Southern politicians -- especially in years past -- had to walk on eggshells
> about the Civil War, because many honorable people have sentimental ties,
> and family ties, that make the unvarnished truth about the Southern position
> in the war unpalatable. I grew up in the upper South, and well remember a
> kind of white-washed history, in which the Southern position was attributed
> to various causes other than merely slavery. One teacher taught that the
> principal political issue leading to secession was the tariff.
> States-rights, which is an eminently respectable position, is the usual
> focus of the explanations. These efforts to create a more palatable history
> are certainly not good history, but they are not pro-slavery. Just the
> opposite. It is precisely because slavery is universally regarded as
> abhorrent that Southern politicians and publicists need to fabricate an
> alternative story.
>
> Michael McConnell
> University of Utah College of Law
> 332 South 1400 East Rm. 101
> Salt Lake City, UT 84112
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sanford Levinson [mailto:SLevinson at MAIL.LAW.UTEXAS.EDU]
> > Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 4:23 PM
> > To: CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu
> > Subject: Re: Ashcroft on American history
> >
> >
> > I note that Attorney General-designate Ashcroft wrote to the Southern
> > Partisan, described in the Washington Post as "a magazine
> > that defends the
> > South in [the Civil War]," the following:  "Your magazine
> > also helps set
> > the records straight.  You've got a heritage of doing that,
> > of defending
> > Southern Patriots like Lee, Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
> > Traditionalists
> > must do more.  I've go to do more.  We've all got to stand up
> > and speak in
> > this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were
> > giving their
> > lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to
> > some perverted
> > agenda."
> >
> > a)  Does this mean that Ahscroft believes that Lee, Jackson
> > and Davis were
> > not at all devoted to the "perverted agenda" of preserving
> > slavery, but
> > only to defending the abstract doctrine of states rights?  Did he
> > purposesly omit Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the
> > Confederacy,
> > inasmuch as he forthrightly stated that the raison d'etre for
> > the CSA was
> > the preservation of slavery?
> >
> > b)  Doesn't this view represent such an amazing blindness to
> > the realities
> > of American history--and their continuing consequences--as to
> > be close to
> > disqualifying with regard to holding high national office?  (Let me be
> > clear:  I happen to believe that, as pure arguments about
> > constitutional
> > interpretation, Judah Benjamin, whose speech can be found in
> > our casebook,
> > is more persuasive than Abraham Lincoln.  But I also happen
> > to believe that
> > it is criminally ignorant to believe that Lee, Jackson, and Davis were
> > fighting only in behalf of the constitutional theory.
> > Indeed, why doesn't
> > Ashcroft go on to defend the Klan, which, after all, can be
> > portrayed (as
> > it was, so notably, by D. W. Griffith) as the defense of
> > states rights and,
> > shall we say, "traditional" prerogatives of white supremacy,
> > against the
> > indeed "revolutionary" aspects of Reconstruction?  If *that* would be
> > disqualifying, then why is Ashcroft's abyssmally ignorant
> > view of the War
> > any less disqualifying?  He may, as George W. Bush, insists,
> > have a fine
> > "heart," but he appears to have a dreadfully empty (or
> > wrongly-filled) head.
> >
> > c)  What if Ashcroft said that Rommell and many other Nazi
> > figures had not
> > committed their lives to a "perverted agenda," but were honorable men
> > simply obeying orders and trying to restore Germany to the dignity
> > wrongfully taken away by Versailles?  (I.e., he could concede
> > that Hitler
> > had a "perverse agenda," but I take it that the meaning of Reagan's
> > disgraceful visit to Bitburg was to "normalize" most Nazis
> > and to place the
> > burden of "perversity" on a relatively few Germans between
> > 1933-1945.)  I
> > take it this would be unacceptable?  Why?  Is it that we as
> > Americans are
> > simply unable to come to terms with our own "perverted"
> > history and the
> > "great men" who joined in the perversion?
> >
> > e)  Is this relevant to a list of constitutional law
> > professors? Yes, if we
> > agree with Felix Frankfurter that "the controlling conceptions of the
> > justices [and, presumably, attorneys general] are their 'idealized
> > political pictures' of the existing social order."
> > Ashcroft's "idealized
> > political pictures" of Lee, Jackson, and Davis should be
> > unacceptable in 2001.
> >
> > d)  What if Ashcroft were nominated to the Supreme Court?
> > Would possession
> > of such dreadful views be a legitimate reason to oppose him,
> > especially
> > inasmuch as he would simply reinforce the current majority of
> > the Supreme
> > Court, which also has a completely deficient understanding of
> > what the War
> > (and its aftermath) was about?  Are we legiimately more
> > fastidious about
> > those we place on the judiciary than those who are hired by
> > We the People
> > to be our chief law enforcer?
> >
> >
> > I hear at this very moment on NPR that Gale Norton's admirers
> > defend her as
> > simply honoring the intent of framers of the Constitution (given her
> > similar admiration for the Lost Cause).  This simply
> > underscores the fact
> > that the actual history of the 14th Amendment is being
> > forgotten, as we
> > continue to celebrate the slaveowners Washington, Madison,
> > Jefferson, et
> > al., and forget, if not outright denigrate, Thaddeus Stevens
> > and the other
> > people who conducted what used to be called "the second American
> > Revolution" (and created a new Constitution in the aftermath).
> >
> > sandy
> >