Drenched in blood of slavery ~ By Roger Hedgecock

By Roger Hedgecock Posted: June 21, 2009 6:37 pm Eastern © 2009 The U.S. Senate voted unanimously last week to adopt a resolution apologizing for slavery. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, lead sponsor of the resolution, said, "You wonder why we didn't do it 100 years ago. It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice." Only after decades of public education ignoring and distorting U.S. history can such a huge lie be said with a straight face. Senator, you didn't do it 100 years ago because 100 years ago you Democrats were enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws, poll taxes to keep blacks from voting, and riding around in sheets and pointy hats just in case blacks didn't get the message. You say "It's important to have a collective response" because you want to bury the origins, purposes, and historical practices of your own party. The worst part is, Republicans in the Senate let you get away with it. Principled Republicans knowing their history would have authored a resolution reciting the facts that the Republican Party was formed, among other reasons, to oppose slavery and that the Republican Party and its first President Abraham Lincoln responded to Southern, Democrat-led secession with a successful war that preserved the union and freed the slaves. After Lincoln's assassination (by a Democrat), the Republican-led Congress (over the objections of the Democratic Party minority) amended the Constitution to confirm the liberation of the slaves (13th Amendment: slavery abolished), and the 14th Amendment (freed slaves are citizens equal to all citizens) and the 15th Amendment (right to vote guaranteed to freed slaves). Southern Democrats spent the next 100 years trying to keep freed slaves down with segregation laws, poll taxes to deny the right to vote, and lynching to enforce the social order. The KKK was formed by a Democrat; no Republican has ever been a member of the KKK. This is the heritage of the Democratic Party. In fact, the Democratic Party was formed in the first place to defend and expand slavery. In 1840, the very first national nominating convention of the Democratic Party adopted a platform which read in part:

Resolved, That Congress has no power ... to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states ... that all efforts by abolitionists ... made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery ... are calculated ... to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union.

Got that, Sen. Harkin? Your party was born defending slavery as necessary for the happiness of the people and threatening secession and war if slavery were challenged. [CONTINUE READING]