Speculation on secession is immoral
Anger ran hot in the American South in December of 1860. The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, the South Carolina General Assembly declared, was a hostile act targeting an entire region. Lincoln’s impending inauguration offered the opportunity to incite those hostile to the federal government, to achieve what for many had been a dream: a republic for slaveholders.
“These political fiends are not half sick enough yet,” the president-elect told a friend. “Party malice and not public good possesses them entirely.”
Seizing the moment, 169 delegates — 153 of them slaveholders — convened in Charleston on Dec. 20, and voted unanimously to make South Carolina the first state of the confederacy. Church bells rang; there were bonfires and parades in celebration.
So began, 160 years ago this month, the steps toward a paroxysm of violence never before or since known by Americans. The lives lost in active duty during our Civil War would equal 6 million as a percentage of today’s population. It was the greatest human catastrophe in our history.
It can only be ignorance of this history that leads some powerful voices in our time to raise the notion of some states now seceding from the union. And for what reason? This: An incumbent president has lost re-election, and he doesn’t want to leave the White House. There are people eager to capitalize on Donald Trump’s failure at the polls for their own benefit, even if it damages the nation itself.
Take, for example, Rush Limbaugh, the radio host whom the president awarded the Medal of Freedom. He brought up the idea on his show on Wednesday. “I actually think that we’re trending toward secession,” he said. “I see more and more people asking what in the world do we have in common with the people who live in, say, New York?”
Limbaugh’s remarks got a lot of attention, including some social media pushback, which could explain why he backed off the next day.
“I never would advocate for secession,” he insisted. “I’m simply repeating what I have heard.” He didn’t say who, exactly, is pushing to split apart the United States, or why he would encourage talk about something he opposes — though in the next breath he claimed that there’s a “sizable and growing sentiment for people who believe that’s where we’re headed.” This sort of talk is reckless. It legitimizes the false notion that the election of a moderate Democrat to the presidency is such a threat to the nation’s historic values that insurrection is a valid response.
Here is what provoked this: Americans voted, freely and fairly, to replace an incumbent president with a former vice president. It’s not so unusual. Ten times in American history, in fact, voters have turned out an incumbent president.
Nor was the election very close, by contemporary standards. Trump, who lost the popular vote in 2016 and has never posted majority support in national polls, has produced no evidence of fraud in the dozens of cases filed in courts on his behalf. Yet to concede graciously, as generations of losing presidential candidates have done, is clearly not in his emotional skill set.
Instead, the president is trying to inflame his followers, to further the divisions that he has exacerbated throughout his several years in politics. He is an angry man who draws support in no small part by convincing people to blame their disappointments on others.
Trump will be succeeded by a man whose long political career has been marked by reaching out to the other side. Joe Biden based his candidacy in no small part on the power of compromise. Yet he is being characterized by Trump and many other Republicans as a radical, an enabler if not a secret supporter of socialists and communists, an enemy of freedom.
Biden will surely find, as Lincoln did, that compromise can go only so far without partners of good will on the other side. There was no compromise that could have avoided the Civil War, after all, unless the Union had been willing to allow slavery or the South to abandon it.
What is it, though, that so divides Americans now? There are issues on which Americans disagree, as there always will be. None is as insurmountable as that which partitioned the country 160 years ago.
What has changed is that we have let anger replace understanding, to the point of blotting out our shared goals. And we have partisans trying to advance their cause with cynical untruths that border on immorality.
“There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs,” Limbaugh said, as he speculated on the nation’s survival.
That is simply not true. Americans all want peace, justice and fairness. We believe in liberty. We want health and happiness for all.
Yet if we see our differences as insurmountable and try to advance our interests by portraying fellow citizens as enemies, we may find ourselves drawing ever closer to the path of our nation’s greatest tragedy.
What has changed is that we have let anger replace understanding, to the point of blotting out our shared goals.