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Slavery and Silence. Paul D. Naish
Читать онлайн.Название Slavery and Silence
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isbn 9780812294309
Автор произведения Paul D. Naish
Издательство Ingram
Despite the fact that the agendas of Adams’s enemies were so varied—“It is not identity of principle; it is merely identity of feeling that forms the bond of their association,” scoffed former New Hampshire representative Salma Hale in an 1826 pamphlet—what most of them shared was an abhorrence to associating with people so clearly different from themselves.49 The United States ought not submit to anything that looked like an alliance with Latin America because such a union would be an unnatural one, a kind of political miscegenation. Although there were too many parallels with the North American situation for the most skeptical critic to overlook them entirely, the proclamation of republicanism was not enough to make the entire hemisphere one.
Not all these differences were specious. Whereas in North America the Continental Congress had coordinated the actions of the thirteen British colonies long before their independence, the Latin American states were coming together for the first time. The original thirteen British colonies emerged as one nation (admittedly one loosely bound together at the beginning), while the former Spanish colonies took another route, with the erstwhile viceroyalties declaring independence on different schedules and as wholly separate nations. Although many of the new states enthusiastically copied the U.S. Constitution, they departed from it in telling ways. They built in provisions for what one historian calls “regimes of exception,”50 making constitutional provisions for the suspension of civil rights during periods of political unrest and allowing for domestic control by the military. And they elected not to follow the U.S. practice of disestablishing religion, retaining Roman Catholicism as not merely the sole state-supported church but the only faith tolerated by the government.
On the other hand, they took a more enlightened approach to slavery, in some cases providing for its eventual elimination and in others abolishing it totally. In many cases these nations took much more literally, and embraced much more inclusively, the language of liberty and equality employed by the Founding Fathers of the United States. And if Haiti offered any preview, subsequent interpretations might be even more generous. In a series of decisions culminating in its constitution of 1816, the Republic of Haiti radically broadened the idea of freedom and redefined the concept of property familiar in the United States. Property included the right of the individual to control the disposition of his or her work, effectively forestalling understandings of “property” that allowed the ownership of human beings. Further, President Alexandre Pétion’s interpretation of the constitution in an 1817 case in which fugitive slaves from Jamaica were given freedom characterized slavery as a form of oppression for which asylum should be granted. While the notoriety of these decisions was limited and their influence circumscribed, they suggest the challenge Latin American manifestations of republicanism could pose to the existing order of the U.S. South.51 By elevating people of mixed race, people of full African descent, and Catholic clerics to positions of political authority, the Latin American nations were already implicitly challenging the United States to realize its self-proclaimed ideals.
Religion and national origin provided immediate markers of foreignness for both sides of the debate in the U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri attempted to startle his auditors into understanding just how different a nation with an established church looked: “Who is the negotiator contending with our Minister in Mexico for this doctrine of exclusive privileges? Is it not Don Ramos Arispe? And who is Don Ramos? A Catholic Bishop; (and I do not mention this in derogation of his character …).”52 The gulf between Catholicism and Protestantism, between established religion and the separation of Church and State, was an easy one to understand. Seemingly just as vast a divide, though somewhat harder to describe succinctly, characterized the European ancestry of North Americans and South Americans. James Hamilton of South Carolina, citing common language, philosophy, religion, and letters, claimed that people in the United States felt more “real sympathy … for the People of Old England, than any States of Spanish origin, whether miscalled or rightly named Republics.… Rest assured, moreover, if free principles are ever in danger—if a combination of despots should endeavor to put out the light of liberty—we shall be found fighting by the side of England against the powers of blood and darkness, whatever may be the alliances the Spanish Republics may form.”53 Republicanism was not so transformative a rebirth that it could wash away one’s European origins, however distant: there was a fundamental, even an essential, difference between Americans of English stock and Americans of Spanish descent. And simply speaking the right words—republic, congress, independence—did not suffice: it mattered whether those words were uttered in English or in Spanish.
But opponents of the Panama Mission, going beyond a comparison of the European ancestors of the North and South Americans, went much further when they vilified their southern neighbors for the fact that too much non-European blood ran in their veins. The racism expressed by Adams’s enemies in 1826 anticipates the assumption of white supremacy that would underlie Jacksonian democracy a few years later. Senator John Holmes of Maine coyly suggested that “When our fresh and fair Ministers shall enter the hall of that Congress, and look round on their associates, I apprehend that they will deem it invidious and indelicate to talk about color.”54 As usual, John Randolph was the most direct: should U.S. delegates go to Panama, they might well be seated “beside the native African, or their American descendants, the mixed breeds, the Indians, and the half breeds.” Indeed the racial purity of all Latin America was suspect: Randolph pointed out that plenty of African blood ran in the veins of the peninsular Spanish; and Guatemala, adjacent to the province in which the congress would be held, he believed, “was considered as much a black Republic at this time as Hayti itself.”55
Some of the congressmen were more discreet in admitting that the true barrier to hemispheric solidarity was a racial one. A certain amount of reading between the lines is required, but the lines are sufficiently far apart to permit an unobstructed view. Opposition Senator John Berrien of Georgia employed a policy of indirection in talking about race and slavery, though his tack was more to assume the whispered complicity of racial supremacy than to threaten and terrify. Berrien suggested that there were certain loyalties that sent all political ones into eclipse: “I have been educated in sentiments of habitual reverence for the Constitution … The feeling is no where more universal, or more strong, than among the People of the South. But they have a stronger feeling. Need I name it? Is there any one who hears, and does not understand me?”56
Once this insistence on racial differences between the United States and Latin America was established, it was possible for senators and representatives to mention slavery without violating the informal ban on its discussion in the federal arena. Ever since the debates over the Missouri Compromise had exposed the fateful fault line between Northern and Southern interests, a tacit understanding had made raising the issue of slavery in the federal Congress an unofficial taboo. While no formal embargo existed, the memory of the acrimony of 1819 and 1820 was still fresh enough to make legislators think twice before raising the subject of slavery: “deeply shocked by the volcanic anger and potential for sectional division revealed by the Missouri debate, Congress would rarely discuss slavery without recourse to euphemism and circumlocution,” wrote Robert Pierce Forbes.57 With memories of the rancor still fresh, Southerners in particular insisted that the very mention of slavery had no place in Congress; it was an issue for state legislation only.
While there would be no formal gag rule in Congress until 1836, the ritual of tabling resolutions and petitions dealing with slavery was common in the early 1820s. The professed refusal to talk about slavery reached absurd extremes. In the Senate in 1825 Rufus King of New York introduced a resolution to establish a fund for the emancipation and colonization of slaves. The resolution was tabled, removing it from debate, much to the consternation of Robert Hayne of South Carolina, who submitted a counter-resolution “intended as a solemn protest” against the very suggestion of federal interference in slavery. Hayne’s counter-resolution was similarly tabled.58
But in the context of Latin America, legislators could express themselves with uncharacteristic bluntness. Though they often approached the dangerous