Totally About Race 1858-2008
We can thank Rush Limbaugh for reminding us about the longstanding issue of race in American politics and culture. We had almost forgotten. And so on the 150th Anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglass debates, still considered by many to be the high-water mark of American political campaign discourse, we see just how “totally about race” American politics remains.
You see Stephen Douglas thought the 1858 campaign was all about race as well and repeatedly returned to Lincoln’s association with “those people”, especially public enemy #1, Frederick Douglass:
In the extreme northern counties they brought out men to canvass the State whose complexion suited their political creed, and hence Fred Douglass, the negro, was to be found there, following Gen. Cass, and attempting to speak on behalf of Lincoln, Trumbull and Abolitionism, against that illustrious Senator. (Renewed laughter.) Why, they brought Fred Douglass to Freeport, when I was addressing a meeting there, in a carriage driven by the white owner, the negro sitting inside with the white lady and her daughter. (Shame.) When I got through canvassing the northern counties that year, and progressed as far south as Springfield, I was met and opposed in discussion by Lincoln, Lovejoy, Trumbull, and Sidney Breese, who were on one side. (Laughter.) Father Giddings, the high-priest of Abolitionism, had just been there, and Chase came about the time I left. (”Why didn’t you shoot him?”) I did take a running shot at them, but as I was single-handed against the white, black and mixed drove, I had to use a short gun and fire into the crowd instead of taking them off singly with a rifle. (Great laughter and cheers.)
15 September 1858, Third Debate at Jonesboro, Illinois
As you can see, the crowd loved Douglas’s race baiting, especially the cavalier gunplay. “Single-handed against the white, black and mixed drove” Douglas gave us rhetoric worthy of, well, 2008. McCain and Palin may have backed off a bit on the red meat recently at rallies, but the disturbing language of lynching and racial superiority (”kill him”, “sit down boy”) hardly suggests that 150 years of progress in American race relations have yielded as much as we might like to believe. Prejudice has simply changed political dance partners.
Douglas continues:
Now these men, four years ago, were engaged in a conspiracy to break down the Democracy; to-day they are again acting together for the same purpose! They do not hoist the same flag; they do not own the same principles, or profess the same faith; but conceal their union for the sake of policy. In the northern counties, you find that all the Conventions are called in the name of the Black Republican party; at Springfield, they dare not call a Republican Convention, but invite all the enemies of the Democracy to unite, and when they get down into Egypt, Trumbull issues notices calling upon the “Free Democracy” to assemble and hear him speak.
Fitting that Douglas places those subversive Black Republicans down in “Little Egypt” in the Southern tip of Illinois, where it’s much easier to find terrorists to pal around with. That’s right, the Mississippi Nile river runs straight through Cairo, Illinois Egypt, and guess who their U.S. Senator is?
Dude, this election is like totally about race.
