Guest Post by Allan Brownfeld: THE CONTINUING ASSAULT UPON AMERICAN HISTORY: A SELF-RIGHTEOUS DISPLAY OF NARROWNESS OF VISION

THE CONTINUING ASSAULT UPON AMERICAN HISTORY:  A SELF-RIGHTEOUS DISPLAY OF NARROWNESS OF VISION
                        BY
             ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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In recent days, we have seen an escalation in the assault upon American history.  Sports-ware company Nike pulled sneakers displaying the 13-star Betsy Ross flag after former NFL football player Colin Kaepernick,  who has a deal with the company, objected because the flag is sometimes displayed by far-right groups.  At almost the same time, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia decided that it would no longer celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson—-and the city of San Francisco announced that it would spend $600,000 to paint over a mural depicting the life of George Washington.

In the case of the Betsy Ross flag, there is no connection in any way with slavery,  Mark Pitcavage, a senior fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said: “We view it as essentially an innocuous historical flag.  It’s not a thing in the white supremacist movement.”  Lisa Moulder, Director of the Betsy Ross House In Philadelphia, says of the flag that, “I’ve always seen it as a representation  of early America, a society that was not perfect and is not perfect today.”

In San Francisco, there are plans to paint over a mural painted 83 years ago as part of a New Deal program, which portrays the life of George Washington, at a cost of $600,000.  The painter was Victor  Arnatoff, a Russian-born radical.  He portrayed many aspects of Washington’s life, including the depiction of slavery  at Mt. Vernon. The mural consists of 13 panels and occupies 600 square feet on a wall in George Washington High School.

Richard Walker, professor emeritus at the Universuty of California at Berkeley, an outspoken liberal and director of the History Project, argues that the portrait is an important part of history and should be maintained:  “We on the left ought to welcome the honest portrayal ...Destroying  this work of art is the worst we can do in dealing with history’s evils.”

The growing attacks upon the history of our country reflect a narrowness of vision.  America, after all, is a human enterprise, and all human enterprises are deeply flawed.  We define things on the basis of how they differ from other things.  With its many shortcomings, our country’s history stands out in positive terms.  Its critics compare America to perfection—-not to other very real places.

In 1987, when we celebrated the bicentennial of the Constitution, Dr. Mark Cannon, Director of the Commission on the Bicentennial, noted that, “Nearly two-thirds of the world’s national constitutions have been adopted or revised  since 1970, and only fourteen predate World War ll.  ...53.5 per cent of the independent states of the world have been under more than one constitution since the end of the Second World War.  The average nation has had two constitutions  since the second World  War.  Two states, Syria and Thailand, have each had nine constitutions over the past forty years...The Constitution of the United States has proven remarkably durable,”

The Constitution—-and all of our history—-is found wanting because of the existence of slavery.  Many critics appear to hold the view that slavery was a uniquely American evil—-our “original sin.”  History, however, tells a far more complex story.

From the beginning of recorded history until the 19th century, slavery was the way of the world.  in 1787, slavery was legal every place in the world.  What was unique was that in the American colonies  there was strenuous objection to slavery and the most prominent Framers of the Constitution wanted to eliminate it at the very start of the nation.

The history of slavery is a long one.  in the ancient world, most people regarded slavery as a natural condition of life, one which could befall anyone at any time,  it has existed almost universally through history among peoples of every level of material culture—-it existed among nomadic pastoralists of Asia, among societies of North American Indians, and sea people such as the Nordemen.  The legal codes of Sumer provide documentary evidence that slavery existed there as early as the 4th  millennium B.C, The Sumerian symbol for slave in cuneiform writing suggests “foreign.”

When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, , not a single nation had made slavery illegal.  As they looked back through history, the Framers saw slavery as an acceptable and accepted institution.  It was not until 1792 that Denmark became the first Western nation to abolish the slave trade.  In 1807, the British Parliament passed a bill,outlawing the slave trade—-and slavery was abolished in British colonies between 1834  and 1848.  Spain ended slavery in Puerto Rico in in 1873 and in Cuba in 1886.  Brazil abolished slavery in 1888.

What is historically unique is not that slavery was the accepted way of the world in 1787, but that so many of the leading men of the American colonies wanted to eliminate it—-and pressed vigorously to do so.

Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were ardent abolitionists.  John Jay, who would become the first Chief Justice, was president of the New York Anti-Slavery Society.  Rufus King and Gouverneur Morris were in the forefront of the opposition to slavery and the slave trade.

One of the great debates at the Constitutional Convention related to the African slave trade.  George Mason of Virginia made an eloquent plea for making it illegal.  He declared:  “This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British merchants.  The British government constantly checked the attempt of Virginia to put a stop to it, ...Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.  They bring  the judgment of heaven on a country.”

The provision finally adopted read:  “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding Ten dollars for each Person.” This  clause was widely viewed by opponents of slavery as an important first step on the long road to abolition.  The delay of twenty years was considered the price ten of the states were willing to pay in order to assure that the original union would include the three states of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.  Even in these states there was sympathy for an end to slavery, but they wanted additional time to phase out their economic dependence on it.  

In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, one of the principal charges made by Thomas Jefferson against King George lll and his predecessors was that they would not allow the American colonies to outlaw the importation of slaves.  

When Jefferson was first elected to the Virginia legislature at the age of 25, his first political act was to begin the elimination of slavery.  Though unsuccessful, he tried to further encourage the emancipation process by writing into the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”  In the draft of a constitution for Virginia,he provided that all slaves should be emancipated in that state by 1800, and that any child born in Virginia after 1801 would be born free. This, however, was not adopted.

The Founding Fathers were committed to building a new civilization which would become a model for the rest of mankind.  Even before the Declaration of Independence, John Adams saw the human hope that was flowering in America, and wrote:  “I always considered the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, of the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the immigrant and the emancipation  of the slavish part of mankind all,over the world.”

Similarly, James Madison declared,  “Happily for Americans, happily we trust for the whole human race, they (the founders) pursued a new and more Noble course.”

To judge the founders of America in 1787 by the values of 2019 is to engage in the sin of contemporaneity.  It is self-righteous in the extreme to find our ancestors wanting, despite their extraordinary achievements.  They created a Constitution and a government which has endured until today.  They gave it the flexibility to expand the freedoms inherent in its written words. When religious persecution plagued the world, they established freedom of religion and separation of church and state.  They limited government power.

Those who would topple statues and paint over murals because those who created our country were not perfect are guilty of a narrowness of vision.  Those who have come before us were imperfect human beings, as are we.   We celebrate them for their achievements—-in spite of their faults and shortcomings.  In totalitarian societies, we have seen groups like the Nazis, the Red Guard and the Taliban burn books, topple statues, and destroy paintings.  We should not permit those in our own society, a small but vocal group, to succeed in imitating such destructive behavior.