The Dixiecrats - Would We Have Been Better Off Had Thurmond Won in 1948?

Lew Rockwell Report ^ | 1949 | Murray Rothbard

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

I believe that in the case of the establishment of the state of Israel, Truman was going along for the ride - this was a British/French move and Truman could not object. Any of the candidates for President in 1948 would have been a part of the establishment of the state of Israel.

[Huck]

My support, however, was not extremely enthusiastic, because, although I agreed wholeheartedly with the platform and Thurmond’s campaign speeches, I felt that it was keyed too much to purely Southern interests.

Says the dupe, unable to draw the obvious conclusion.

[Non-Sequitur]

I would like to add that, as an economist, I enthusiastically support your proposals on national debt and taxes – in fact, taken all and all, from the news reports I would say that your new platform is one of the best in American history. Indeed, it is one of the finest political statements in America since Calhoun’s Exposition.

I'm confused, billbears. Here is the platform, where are the parts about taxes and national debt? Looks like they were concerned with one thing and one thing only, segregation.

[reg45]

Double Ditto!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

If Wallace had been veep when FDR died (and then became president)the US wouldn't have successfully contained Communism. The policy started with Truman. Wallace was a socialist nitwit and would've been a pushover for the Rooskies.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

My point was, Wallace was out of the picture (thank God) when FDR died and Truman, not Wallace, assumed the presidency.

[Wallace T.]

This is an interesting point - could the 13th Amendment have been used to eliminate the vestiges of slavery, such as segregation in the private sector? Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach did not need to test this theory, inasmuch as the "tried and true" Interstate Commerce clause was plenty of justification for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, at least in the eyes of the Warren Court.

There are several glitches in such an application. First, slavery was abolished in those parts of the South controlled by the Confederacy by the Emancipation Proclamation. As Sherman marched through Georgia, for example, slaves were freed. That proclamation did not free slaves in the four slaveholding states that could not join the Confederacy, nor in West Virginia, nor those portions of Southern states, like northern Virginia, east Tennessee, and south Louisiana, under Northern occupation as of January 1, 1863. By January 31, 1865, when the amendment was sent to the states, the areas still under Confederate control were greatly reduced. By August of that year, Union control was effectively established throughout all the South. By August 1865, Lincoln's proclamation had freed over 95% of American slaves. Slave labor was not a major economic element in the Border states by 1865, nor in the portions of Confederate territory occupied by the Union as of January 1, 1863. What the amendment did was to codify into America's fundamental law the concept that slavery was forever illegal.

That the Border states like Maryland and Missouri and the most conservative Northern states like Ohio, New Jersey, and Indiana ratified this amendment would indicate that the state legislatures believed that the amendment would merely formally abolish what was, by August 1865, a moribund institution.

If segregation was a "badge or incident of slavery" in the South, then what about its existence in Northern states? Keep in mind that the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education was based not on a Southern, but a Kansas school district. Many Northern states had Jim Crow laws; if they did not, they certainly did not prohibit discrimination in the private sector. Also, both law and social custom discriminated against American Indians and Orientals, races that were never subject to mass chattel slavery in America, in many Northern and Western states. Hispanics, Irish, Germans, Italians, Mormons, and Jews, though never enslaved in this country(except for Irish and British indentured servants in colonial times), nor discriminated against by law, were subject to widespread economic and social discrimination.

Additionally, the 13th Amendment has had little penumbrance. It does not forbid a military draft, nor other compulsory duties of citizens that had existed, in the interpretation of the Supreme Court in 1918, from time immemorial. Its extension to the area of private sector discrimination would not appear warranted.

[Wallace T.]

Clearly the Dixiecrats supported state sponsored segregation, the misuse of state and local government power against the African-American populace. However, is the system Lyndon Johnson and his cohorts devised also evil? If laws against miscegenation are intrusive, so are laws dictating to whom property can be sold or to whom one must give a job. If it was wrong for state licensing boards and bar associations in 1932 to deny licenses to well qualified blacks, so it is wrong in 2002 for state and Federal agencies to force private businesses to accept underqualified minority applicants. If forcing blacks in 1940 into inferior schools through a combination of segregation and neglect was wrong, so was forcing whites to attend unsafe schools through mandatory busing in 1970. Indeed, forced busing at its height extended to places like Massachusetts that had abolished school segregation in the 19th Century!

There is an old saying that two wrongs don't make a right. Both forcible segregation and forcible integration are wrong. Governments, Federal, state, and local, should be limited in their authority and be as impartial as humanly possible.

[Don'tMessWithTexas]

I believe the geographic considerations you raise regarding segregation and slavery are interesting but nevertheless irrelevant to the application of the 13th amendment. The 13th not only abolished slavery, but abolished the badges and incidents of slavery that could have been pertpetuated even though involuntary servitude was abolished. In other words, abolition would mean little if freed slaves were unable to own land or negotiate contracts.

If segregation was an incident of slavery in South Carolina, it would be an incident of slavery in Kansas even if Kansas had been a free state. If black folks could not get accomodations or vote or purchase property they would be free in name only. Segregation would be something that perpetuated the institution and hence reachable by the 13th amendment. Second, because the 13th is not limited to state action, Congress could restrict private behavior or state action.

[Captain Kirk]

That's because it isn't the complete platform. I tried to find it on google without success but I know it was longer, more detailed, and more expansive in its praise of segregation.

[Captain Kirk]

Rothbard's call for an alliance with Thurmond was misguided. Conservatives and libertarians would have been far better off in the longterm if they had embraced the early CR movement in the 1950s. King's (a Republican, BTW) early demands were actually quite modest and included an end to official segregation and enforcement of the 15th Amendment. He tried to use the tools of market including boycotts and even proposed (but was slamned down by the regulators) a competing bus company. One should also mention that people in King's group were armed to the teeth.

Heck, in the early stages of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King did not even demand integrated buses but equal treatment with the context of seperate but equal. Conservatives,didn't even have to necessarily endorse federal action. They could have simply expressed moral support for King's noble cause. They failed to do this and have been paying for it ever since.

[rightofrush]

If Wallace in '45, then Taft in '48. After getting a taste of a real-life commie, Dewey wouldn't have had a chance and Taft would have won in a walk.