Forgotten History of Blacks, Democrats and Republicans

I am excerpting and paraphrasing the first portion of a totally necessary book for every library: “American History in Black and White”, by David Barton, WallBuilder Press, 2004. This book focuses on the race history of the USA, much of which has been kept out of history books, for reasons which will become obvious. The book is heavily annotated with 41 pages of endnotes and bibliography.

Understanding the actual historical backgrounds of the two political parties is essential in this time of political lies and class warfare.


American history that has been forgotten and/or obscured.

Chronology, abbreviated:
1619. The “first slave ship arrived in the Massachusetts Colony set up by Christian Pilgrims and Puritans. Ship’s officers were arrested, imprisoned and the kidnapped slaves were returned to Africa at the colony’s expense”.

1776. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were anti-slave ownership.

1776. American army was fully integrated during the Revolution.

1787. Signers of the U.S. Constitution were divided between Northern abolitionists and Southern slave-owners. The southern slave-owners wanted to count their slaves as part of the population in order to swell their number of congressional representatives (without giving them any rights as humans). The North responded that they would count their possessions too, then, including cows, horses and sheep. The compromise was for each slave to count as 3/5; this somewhat reduced the number of representatives for the slave states, giving them less power to keep slavery viable. This ratio in no manner represented the human value of the slave; it was merely intended to limit southern over-representation in Congress.

1789. Congress expanded its non-slavery constituency by passing the Northwest Ordinance, which added territories and forbade slavery in all federal territories. Ultimately Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin all eventually became free states.

Some slave states began dividing to increase their representation: Kentucky out of Virginia; Tennessee out of North Carolina.

1792. Thomas Jefferson formed the Democrat Party.

1793. First Fugitive Slave Act was passed, requiring the return of run-away slaves.

1808. Congress abolished slave trade.

1820. Now the Democrat Party was dominant political party. The Democrats reversed slavery policy by permitting it in the Missouri Compromise territories. “For the first time since the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, slavery was being officially promoted by congressional policy.”

1837. The Underground Railroad started, in New York. Free Blacks were being kidnapped and sent south as slaves. The Underground Railroad was begun as a path back to freedom.
(“Gateway to Freedom”, Eric Foner, WW Norton & Co, 2015.)

1850. “Several other pro-slavery laws were passed by the Democrats in Congress, including the Second Fugitive Slave Act, which required Northerners to return escaped slaves back into slavery or else pay huge fines”. This effectively brought forced participation in slavery to northern Free States, angering northerners.

This Act encouraged southerners to become slave-hunters and to kidnap even Free Blacks in the north and take them back into slavery. If a black were even accused of being an escaped slave, he could be taken with no rights, no jury trial, no habeas corpus, back South and into slavery.

1854. Democratic Congress passed Kansas-Nebraska Act, expanded slavery into all of the Kansas-Nebraska Territory, where it had previously been forbidden. Pro-slavery “forces” poured onto the territories, leading to violent battles against the anti-slavery residents; this was called “Bleeding Kansas”.

1854. Anti-slavery Democrats in Congress, with anti-slavery Whigs, Free-Soilers, Emancipationists, “formed a new political party to fight slavery and secure equal civil rights for black Americans: the Republicans".

1856. One of the founders of the Republican Party, Charles Sumner, gave a two day speech against slavery in the Senate. A US Representative, Preston Brooks from South Carolina came across the Rotunda to the Senate and literally clubbed down Sumner to the floor, knocking him unconscious, nearly killing him. It took Sumner three and one-half years to return to the senate, where upon his return his first speech was anti-slavery.

Democrat Preston Brooks was “proclaimed a hero and easily reelected to Congress”.

1856. Republicans ran john C Fremont for President on a platform with nine planks, six of which were civil rights for blacks; Democrats ran James Buchanan, and warned against “diminished happiness” if abolition were pursued.

1857. Democrat controlled US Supreme Court made the Dred Scott decision, declaring that blacks were not persons or citizens but instead were property and therefore had “no rights to which the white man was bound to respect; and the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” Democrat President Buchanan pressured at least one US justice to vote against Dred Scott (for slavery). Chief Justice Taney, a former slave holder, wrote what is now considered “the worst decision in the history of the court”, including invalidating the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, all of which was just to favor slavery.

Democrats were joyful; Republicans and Northern Democrats were enraged. The lines were drawn.

1860. Abraham Lincoln, Republican, won the presidency on a platform against the Fugitive Slave Law and the Dred Scott decision. The Democrat platform supported both of those. “In fact, the Democrats handed out copies of the Dred Scott decision along with their platform to affirm their belief that it was proper to have slavery and to hold African Americans in bondage”.

The Republicans had taken control of Congress and the Presidency. Democrats left Congress to set up their own nation, the Confederacy of slave states. “State’s Rights” meant to the Confederate Democrats that every state had the right to decide whether to have slaves. “According to official Southern documents - slavery was THE primary distinction between the North and the South”. Ultimately it became the Democrat cry and was used for segregation and institutional discrimination.

Conclusion:
This is a loose summary of just the first part of the book, which contains much more detailed information. I recommend: Get a copy somehow, and read it. Some of this also comes from “Gateway to Freedom”, Eric Foner, WW Norton & Co, 2015, regarding “the hidden history of the underground railroad”.