American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with David William Blight, part 6 of 6

Back to look at the big picture. What role did the abolitionist play in the long road to Syria? Well, abolitionists had a crucial role, of course, in the coming of the American Civil War. There was a time in American history and scholarship when they were blamed for it, famously blamed for the war. Hadn't been for those fanatical abolitionists, the country would have found its way to compromise and its genius of moderation. Now, the last 30, 40, 50 years of American scholarship has turned that idea around a good deal. I do think it's worth saying that, in effect, in the end, a great reform movement like this goes through all of its stages from gradualism to more radical means and strategies did not itself free the slate. It's a fact. It's an ugly, bitter, it's a tragic fact of our history that despite the brilliance of this reform movement

and the people in it, the people we're discussing here, despite their heroism, whether it's on the platform or as a fugitive slave or as an editor, the kind of daily heroism of these anti-slavery editors, or standing up with your voice, night after night somewhere where someone could kill you. In the end, it took larger forces. It took political collisions. And unfortunately, tragically, it took armies to free the slaves. One crass way of putting it is the abolitionists didn't themselves end up freeing the slaves. The abolitionists had a great deal to do with causing a circumstance to put the union armies in the field who freed the slaves. Now, what we can say at different stages here, and this is the way historians think, of course, that abolitionism had a great deal to do

with affecting the climate of national public opinion when the country went to war with Mexico, for example. And suddenly that war with Mexico was all about, would slavery spread there? Well, I hadn't ever had the abolitionists complaining about and writing about and petitioning about this system for so long the country might not have cared as much about it. With the compromise of 1850, if the abolitionists hadn't laid down all these arguments about whether it's slavery in the west or its slave auctions going on in Washington, DC, or what about the fact that you could create three new slaves states out in the southwest, then that political climate would have been very different. If many of those abolitionists hadn't transferred their abilities, their strengths, their talents and politics in the 1850s, the political culture would have been very, very different.

If they hadn't decided to draw certain kinds of lines against all this complicity of the federal government and all this power that the slave holding interest in the South seemed to have, if they hadn't argued what they argued in the wake of the Dred Scott case. I mean, so many abolitionists after Dred Scott said, you see, we've been telling you for decades that there's a slave power conspiracy. And if you don't believe it now, I mean, there was always a slogan on one hand, but also there was just all great political slogans. There's just enough truth in it. We've been telling you for decades, we didn't tell you since the 1820s that there's a slave power conspiracy out there of President Supreme Court members of Congress people, of bankers, of ship owners to not only preserve, but expand this system of slavery until it dominates every aspect of American society and economy. And now here's the Supreme Court saying,

slavery has an eternal future in the United States, which is what the Dred Scott case really said. And it said that black people can never ever be citizens in this country. In other words, at that moment, abolitionists were being blamed wrongly for this crisis. They were always blamed. On the other hand, without them, the debate wouldn't have been occurring. So I know we don't want to give abolitionist credit for bringing on the Civil War more than anybody else. Slavery brought on the Civil War, but they were there ever since the 1820s on as a voice of conscience, a voice of moral and political strategy, a voice of awareness, a voice of religious morality, and really a voice of civil religion in this country that eventually came to argue, the United States is a beacon to the world, but it's become a beacon

to the world as a slave owning society. And is that what we want our country to be? I think at the end, let's say the end of the 1850s and the eve of the American Civil War, it's not only the existence of the union at stake. It's what kind of union was that going to be? What kind of republic was that going to be? The abolitionists, and this is clearly the case with Frederick Douglass, had been wishing for, had been predicting, had been arguing in effect, that the first American republic, the one invented in the revolution in the late 18th century, had to die. It had to be crushed and reinvented. And it, that's what Douglass argues in the great Fourth of July speech of 1852. That is the case he makes more brilliantly than anybody ever did, that a new and different American republic must be invented, or this one is doomed.

In all the ways they'd made those arguments, whether it's just from the position of moral suasion or whether it's from political anti-slavery persuasion and everything in the, or whether it's violent abolitionists, John Brown becomes, whatever position they had taken, they'd really been arguing that the American republic is so deeply flawed. It is a republic born of a certain kind of genius of political theory. And, and parts of its constitution and its bill of rights. But it is so deeply flawed by the fact that human beings are property, that slavery exists and it did not only exist, but has become the most dominant thing in the economy, that that republic is doomed. It must be crushed, it must be changed and reinvented. They had been making that case for 30 to 40 years by the time Fort Sumter came. Now, we can make them into prophets.

We can, we can make this all into a nice linear teleology that says, well, of course, eventually, America would free this life. No, nothing was inevitable about this. You can step at any point in this 40-year story, and you can see nothing inevitable about this. What's really coming about is, because people made it happen. And, in fact, Douglas was, when the war finally came, by 6263, Douglas was very fond of these kind of homely metaphors he would use in his speeches. You know, he would talk about how the American Republic was founded back in the 18th century. It was delivered in its sort of poison form to the people and the poison got deeper and the poison got deeper. And finally, it just broke out. You know, and here you have now, this poison is spreading all over the place. You must kill it, kill it quickly, kill it now, or it will kill you, you know. It's the same, he used that kind of a metaphor

in the Fourth of July speech. And that speech, his metaphor was a reptile resting at the breast of the Republic. Territory says, before it tears out your heart, I don't know. I'd urge everybody to go back and read that 1852 Fourth of July speech. It's the rhetorical masterpiece of abolitionism. It's like a symphony in three movements. And if you want, there's one thing to read out of the American end, well, there are many things to read. But there's one thing to read out of the American anti-slavery movement, universally, forever. It's that speech by Douglas. I think that the abolitionist statement you've been gave back to Mark on the rest of this time. Yes, abolitionists not only left a mark because they're caused ultimately triumphs in this war, although it causes going to be lost in the trade and the way to the war in some ways.

They left a mark on the way we think about media. They exploited the print revolution as well or better than anybody over their times. They left us a whole template of ideas about reform strategy, any reform movement that occurs subsequently in American history, whether you talk about the populist movement or conservative reform movements, let's say the anti-abortion movement today that likes to appropriate. John Brown is their hero. Many, many women's rights, the gay rights movement, all kinds of movements throughout our history. It basically been modeling the anti-slavery movement in its strategies, in its organizations. Their failures and their successes, by the way. The classic template here for what happens to any kind of reform movement is all there

for those who want to go back and look at it. Most reform movements begin with a certain kind of moderate approach, a certain degree. Whatever you want to get rid of, whatever you want to change, you have a certain kind of gradualism, a little petitioning. And then it moves usually because of resistance to events. Events force them, events force them into more radical measures, more radical strategies, and more radical ideas. That's what happens to most reform moves if they're serious and if they stick. They don't all win, clearly. And in fact, victory usually is the death of most reform movements. It's somewhat what happened to the American anti-slavery movement, but it's the template in a host of ways for basically all reform movements to come, particularly the women's movement. You know, we talked about there, there are five characters play very different roles, which is that they're almost

templates for, you know, we did this on the head, and that they haven't, either, but those characters tend to show up because the John Brown is the idealist to fight with this at the top again. Well, each of the five characters you're representing in this film are themselves prototypes of the different kinds of leaders we find in subsequent movements in the future. You think of a William Jennings Bryan? I mean, you ran for president through four times, but he was a voice of populism. He was a certain kind of a voice of a certain political persuasion. There have been many other examples. Frederick Douglass is the prototype for virtually every other major black leader of the 20th century, who have tended to be, lest we forget, men of language. And the voice, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. Du Bois to a degree, although Du Bois

of the written word is much as spoken word. And there are many other examples of great organizational people who were good managers, who could create organizations. And then there are the garrisons who take positions, who take moral positions, rooted in a certain conception of the Bible politics that some people call it, but also create a movement, create a following, know how to create newspapers and a great propagandist. Garrison was a great propagandist. He was effective with audiences in person, and he was very effective as a propagandist on the page. He was even pretty effectively used poetry at times, which is interesting. So yeah, I mean, these people, and then John Browns, of course. I mean, we're pinning everything about violence here on John Brown. He wasn't just a violent abolitionist, although that is, of course, how he's principally remembered both

from Kansas and from Harpers Ferry and for good reason. But we've got somebody here representing about every wing and every aspect of the direction or reform movement can take. And if we look at contemporary movements, there are those who would wield guns for their cause and have, and we don't even need to name the causes we know. And there are those who just operate behind the scenes and organize and do phone banks and do social media now. And then there are those who can still basically lead with their voice, their pen or their oratory. And there are those who are the consummate pragmatists and those who are always drawing the line as radically. You take the two current extremes of our political culture, the Tea Party, and the Occupy Movement. Within those two movements, which are both very in co-aid and rather disorganized, although the Tea Party

has been more organized and much better funded, we can find almost all of these prototypes even within those movements. The Occupy Movement is looking for the good political pragmatists. And the Tea Party has plenty of representatives in Congress, and financiers. But those movements, too, left or right, go through the same process. So wherever we find reform movements in American history, inevitably, they're going to get compared to the abolitionist, whether we know the history or not. And that's why we should know the history. Thank you. That's that way of talking. We should know it. Oh, it's a good idea. So we just need to sit for one time and get room time. Here's room time. Thank you so much, David.

I always love that minute of sound.