From the Archives: A history of legitimate political discourse

By Aula Minerva
Spy Archivist

Yesterday the Republican Party of the United States censured two of its own for the high crime and misdemeanor of investigating the January 6, 2021 attempted violent overthrow of the United States Government.  Among other gems, as summed up in a pithy New York Times headline:

Even the normally staid Times found this a bit much:

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Wanted for the crime of political discourse

After the vote, party leaders rushed to clarify that language, saying it was never meant to apply to rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name.

“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

But the censure, which was carefully negotiated in private among party members, made no such distinction, nor is the House committee investigating the attack examining any normal political debate.  

The rebranding of violent insurrection, including the attempted lynchings of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, as “legitimate political discourse” sounded novel as well as batsh*t crazy.  But a quick check of the Spy's voluminous 252-year archives proved that it was as American as no-knock warrants.

 

May 26, 1850

DASTARDLY ASSAULT ON SEN. SUMNER ON THE SENATE FLOOR IS DEFENDED AS "LEGITIMATE POLITICAL DISCOURSE" Senator Seriously Wounded by Southern Savage By Fast Clipper to The Massachusetts Spy   For the supposed sin of defending the honor of the Nation in a noble speech on the floor of the United States Senate on the bloody subversion in Kansas Territory, Senator Charles Sumner was latterly attacked and gravely wounded by a savage Southerner as he worked at his Senate desk. The perpetrator of the dastardly deed, the dishonorable of Preston Brooks, the pride of South Carolina, pounced on the helpless Sumner and beat him insensible with a massive club he carried for the purpose of consummating his vile crime. Adding hypocrisy to injury, and while Senator Sumner lay on his bed of pain in Washington City, Brooks declared that his attack on the distinguished son of the Commonwealth was motivated by Sumner's supposed “libel of South Carolina” and thus was nothing more than a spirited example of “legitimate political discourse.”  Compounding the outrage, Brooks's fellow Southern brutes echoed his miserable justification of his attempted assassination.  Newspapers in South Carolina commended the thug for nobly defending the honor of his state.   The leading newspaper of the Slave Power, the Richmond Enquirer, said the act was good in conception and better in execution.  It went on to defend the savage beating as  “legitimate political discourse” opposing the plans of the Radical Republicans to assault the liberty of slave holders to take their property into the Territories.   If the brutal sneak attack on a distinguished Senator can be admitted as part of “legitimate political discourse,” then what pray tell would the Southern vigilantes regard as beyond the pale?  Human sacrifice?  Cannibalism?  Grabbing white women by their privy parts? Truly the depravity of Southern slavers knows no bottom.  We can only fear the effusion of blood that will be necessary to crush this menace once and for all.

 

Legitimate political discourse, Southern style

April 15, 1861

REBELS CLAIM FT. SUMTER ATTACK JUST "LEGITIMATE POLITICAL DISCOURSE" Rebellion Adds Hypocrisy to its Treason By Telegraph to The Massachusetts Spy   Hard on the heels of the dastardly Rebel attack on the brave Federals at Fort Sumter, the leaders of the insurrection have now had the temerity to suggest that the violent bloody battle was nothing more than “legitimate political discourse” intended to protect the rights of the Southern rebels to peacefully decide their own political destiny.  The secessionist powers in Tennessee said that the attack on the Federal garrison in Charleston Harbor was intended to protect Southern rights against what they chose to call Black Republicanism. So the voracious Slave Power, not content to reduce these United States to a disorganized rabble by the application of powder and shot, now contends that it has the legitimate right to do so, having failed to achieve their dishonorable objectives by peaceful means. It will be recalled that the assault of Ft. Sumter cost the life of a brave Federal soldier and led to the wounding and imprisonment of the survivors of the attack.  And this the Slave Power calls legitimate political discourse?  Will they say they the same when their bare-chested hell raisers clad only in animal skins storm the Federal Capitol?   It is hard to know what is more contemptible: the attitude of the Southern Rebels or their arrogant belief that anyone would believe their treasonous drivel.

 

 

The cut and thrust of legitimate political discourse, 1861

November 12, 1898

WHITE MOBS DESTROY BLACK COMMUNITY AND DEMOCRACY IN WILMINGTON, N. CAROLINA. Lynchings, Burnings, and Beatings Force Innocent Black Families to Flee for their Lives By Miss “Jane Doe,” Special Correspondent of The Massachusetts Spy The most brutal assault on American democracy since the Civil War ravaged the formerly free and democratic city of Wilmington, N.C. earlier this week, as an organized white mob used unspeakable violence to overthrow the duly-elected government of the city and wipe from the face of the Earth the wealth and power of its black residents.  Your correspondent witnessed first hand the murders of innocent hard-working members of the black community at the hands of white vigilantes who decided that democracy could no longer be tolerated if it meant allowing honest black men to vote.  In fear of her life, she fled the state and telegraphed this report from Washington, D.C. Reliable reports state that up to 60 persons, all black, had been murdered in the violence.  The offices of the black newspaper were burned and its proprietor forced to flee for his life, as were many other black citizens of the community. The leader of the mob, one Alfred Moore Wedell, was praised by the triumphant white men as a righteous campaigner for sobriety and peace who restored “legitimate political discourse” after decades of multi-racial Republican rule. Unless the truth of this unprovoked atrocity comes out, it is probable that white racists will be able to exclude all persons of color from “legitimate political discourse” and return the former Confederacy to its former status as a sanctuary for human slavery, oppression, and race prejudice for decades to come.

Wilmington, N.C. after a day of legitimate political discourse

 

Hope you've enjoyed a few glimpses of your American history.  You probably have heard about Fort Sumter, but the chances that you knew the story of the Wilmington massacre are between slim and none.

That's because for decades white Southerners successfully prohibited the real history of the South from being taught:

Glenda Gilmore, a North Carolina native and a professor of history at Yale, refers to the whitewashed period as “a 50-year black hole of information.” According to Gilmore, the bloody history of white supremacy was largely unacknowledged in the state’s educational system. “Someone like me, I had never heard the word ‘lynching’ until I was 21,” she says. “This history was totally hidden from white children. And that was deliberate.”

Good thing that kind of willed forgetting in the service of white supremacy could never happen again.  

Except in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, etc. etc.