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The current redistricting offensive is hardly the only Republican echo of the politics of the slaveocracy, of course. The ICE seizures in and deportations from American cities have borne a striking resemblance to the slaveholders’ seizures in Northern cities of former slaves, under the authority of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Just as Bostonians in the decade before the Civil War rallied to defend Blacks who’d escaped to the North, and sought to obstruct the men the slaveholders sent to recapture them, so Angelenos have rallied to obstruct the ICE agents who’ve been sundering families and disrupting communities in Los Angeles. And just as the escaped slaves had violated no federal law save the Fugitive Slave Act, so the clear majority of ICE detainees and deportees have violated no law save that of unlawful entry to the United States, which is not classified as a felony.
During the first two years of the Civil War, the South had hoped to win diplomatic recognition from the two dominant European nations: France and, chiefly, Britain. The British clothing and textile industry relied overwhelmingly on cotton from the South. But by late 1862, once the war to preserve the Union was clearly transforming into the war to end American slavery, Britain and France were compelled to abandon any thought of recognizing the Confederacy.
Would that Europe had adhered to an anti-neo-Confederate perspective in recent decades. Instead, a host of major European companies have opened their U.S.-based plants exclusively in right-to-work Southern states and (except for Volkswagen) opposed all efforts of the workers in those plants to unionize. As such, they’ve sided with Southern Republicans who’ve viewed with horror the prospect of their workers gaining democratic rights and, just maybe, more Democratic-aligned politics. In a sense, those European companies’ perspective has been that of the British textile magnates of 1861, but there’s been no effective counterforce to that “bottom line über alles” viewpoint this time around.
Trump has expressed a desire to have his likeness added to those of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore. Where he really belongs is on Stone Mountain in Georgia, where the likenesses of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis look down on a South that still seeks to weaken popular rule and is far from convinced that all men are created equal.
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