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Tag: confederacy
True History: Arizona's Strict Abortion Ban Is A Relic Of The Confederacy

True History: Arizona's Strict Abortion Ban Is A Relic Of The Confederacy

The 1864 Arizona law that was reinstated by a judge’s ruling on Friday bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother. Described in most reports as a law passed during the time Arizona was a territory, before it achieved statehood in 1912, one important fact has been omitted both from the judge’s decision and from the press reports on the draconian abortion ban: Arizona was a territory in 1864 all right, but it wasn’t a territory of the United States. The territorial legislature that passed the abortion ban did so on behalf of the Confederate States of America, into which Arizona was accepted when Jefferson Davis signed “An Act to Organize the Territory of Arizona” on January 18, 1862.

Arizona remained a territory of the Confederate states until the end of the Civil War in 1865, which means that the legislature that passed the exceedingly strict abortion law in 1864 was a legislature recognized by the Confederacy and loyal to it. The Arizona Territory sent horses, men, and supplies to the Confederate army during the Civil War and organized Company A of the Arizona Rangers, which was reconstituted into the Arizona Scout Company after several battles with the Union Army of California.

The Arizona Scout Company joined a Texas Cavalry Division in the Confederate Army under Major General Tom Green. The Arizona Scouts fought against the Union Army’s Red River Campaign and in the battle of the Sabine Crossroads and the battle of Pleasant Hill, when the Union attempted to occupy the capital of Louisiana, then located in Shreveport. The Arizona Scouts went on to serve under Confederate General John Wharton in Arkansas, fighting several skirmishes and small battles until General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered all Confederate forces west of the Mississippi on May 26, 1865.

That’s how loyal the citizens of the Arizona Territory were to the Confederacy. They fought alongside Texans and gave their lives for the right to own slaves right up to the bitter end.

If you read Justice Samuel Alito’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, he runs down a list of states that had banned abortion as he tried to make the case that the United States had no “history and tradition” of legal abortion before the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. The 14th Amendment, providing citizens with equal protection under the law, was one of the amendments to the Constitution on which the Roe decision relied. Among those states were Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, all states that had been in the Confederacy. Among them in banning abortion was Arizona, then a Confederate territory.

What’s the point of all this history? Well, I think it’s important to understand that many of the states that decided way back then to deny women the right to control their own reproductive lives also denied to their Black populations the right to control any part of their lives, as slaves.

Arizona recently passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy which was due to go into effect on September 24. On September 23, however, a judge in Arizona decided that it is necessary to go all the way back to 1864 and reinstate a law passed by a Confederate territorial legislature.

Women who at least would have had the right to terminate their pregnancies in the first 15 weeks after conception are now banned from having an abortion at any time at all, including to remedy a pregnancy that is due to rape or incest. In cases involving a fetal condition which may endanger a woman’s life, the pregnancy must be endured until the point endangerment is actually reached. This means if a woman becomes pregnant with a baby suffering from anencephaly – a defect whereby the skull, brain and scalp do not completely form – or other conditions that can cause an early end to a pregnancy that endangers the life of a woman, Arizona demands that an abortion cannot be performed until an emergency is declared and an abortion becomes mandatory to save her life.

Under the terms of the 1864 law, anyone who performs an abortion or helps a woman obtain an abortion can be punished with up to five years in prison.

The decision by Arizona Judge Kellie Johnson threw the state into disarray, with arguments about which law should prevail – the 15-week ban which took effect last Saturday, or the draconian 1864 law. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who signed the 15-week ban, said the new abortion law would supersede the old law, but the state’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, said he would enforce the Confederate-era total ban on abortions.

Democrats are set to seize the issue in the upcoming midterm elections. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who is running for governor against Republican Kari Lake, came out against the abortion ban almost immediately. “We cannot let her [Lake] hold public office and have the power to enact extreme anti-choice policies that she’s spent her entire campaign touting,” Hobbs said at a press conference on Saturday alongside Democrat Kris Mayes, who is running for attorney general.

But Republican candidates for every major office in the state of Arizona were silent on the abortion issue Saturday. From Kari Lake, nothing. From Blake Masters, running for Senate against Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly, nothing. From Abe Hamadeh, the Republican running for attorney general, nothing. Previously, Lake has called abortion “the ultimate sin” and has called for a ban on abortion pills. Masters has termed abortion “demonic” and called for a federal fetal personhood law that would ban abortions in every state.

Lately, Masters has dropped references to the fetal personhood law from his campaign website and deleted a section in which he said he is “100 percent pro-life.” Lake has refused to comment on the reinstatement of the 1864 ban on all abortions.

Which side will prevail in the struggle over women’s rights in Arizona is up to the voters in November. Election of Hobbs as governor and Mayes as attorney general will certainly help. Mayes has said she will not enforce the Arizona ban on abortion and will direct county prosecutors to do the same. Hobbs says she will veto any further laws against abortion and push the Arizona legislature to overturn the 1864 total ban, but with Republicans in charge of that body, she doesn’t stand much of a chance. Alternatively, both candidates say they will support a ballot measure giving voters the opportunity to decide where Arizona stands on abortion in 2024.

For now, the Confederate-era ban on abortions in Arizona stands.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter

Why General Lee Doesn't Deserve A Statue But Jefferson Does

Why General Lee Doesn't Deserve A Statue But Jefferson Does

Reprinted with permission from Creators

In New York City, a statue of Thomas Jefferson has graced the City Council chamber for 100 years. This week, the Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove it. "Jefferson embodies some of the most shameful parts of our country's history," explained Adrienne Adams, a councilwoman from Queens. Assemblyman Charles Barron went even further. Responding to a question about where the statue should go next, he was contemptuous: "I don't think it should go anywhere. I don't think it should exist."

When iconoclasts topple Jefferson, they seem to validate the argument advanced by defenders of Confederate monuments that there is no escape from the slippery slope. "First, they come for Nathan Bedford Forrest and then for Robert E. Lee. Where does it end? Is Jefferson next? Is George Washington?"

No historical figure is without blemish, they protest. And it's unfair to condemn our ancestors using today's standards. If owning slaves is the discrediting fact about Lee, how then can we excuse George Washington? As if on cue, "TFG" chimed in with a statement chiding the city for "evicting" the "late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important founding fathers." Not so important, apparently, that former President Donald Trump felt the need to learn about him though, because the next phrase was "a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States." Sigh. No, Jefferson was in Paris during the Constitutional Convention. He authored another founding document Trump hasn't read. But never mind.

There is an answer — a reason why it's right to remove Robert E. Lee from his pedestal in Richmond, Virginia, yet wrong to exile Thomas Jefferson from a place of honor in American life. It requires grappling with the full complexity of human beings and the mixed legacy of history. We must, as William Shakespeare said, "Take them for all in all," that is, judge them for their entire lives, not just a part.

People who defend monuments to Lee on the grounds that he played an important role in our history are confusing significance with honor. Lee surely played a huge role in our history, but as the leader of an army whose aim was to destroy the union. That made him a textbook traitor. As Ulysses Grant put it in his memoir, recalling his feelings upon accepting Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Lee had fought "valiantly" but for a cause that was "one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."

Is it fair to judge Lee by our modern standards? Perhaps not, but even by the standards of his own day, he is wanting. Much has been made of Lee's supposedly agonizing decision to resign his U.S. Army commission because he could not "raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children." But others, including Gen. Winfield Scott, who offered Lee command of the Union army in 1861, also hailed from Virginia, yet remained loyal, as did Virginian Gen. George Henry Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," and an estimated 100,000 white Southerners who fought for the Union.

Lee's image has been sanitized and even beatified by purveyors of the "Lost Cause" narrative about the Confederacy. They've depicted Lee as an upright, chivalrous defender of tradition, a moral man and a Christian. But, as Adam Serwer reminds us, Lee was a cruel slave master. In the words of Wesley Norris, one of his slaves who attempted to escape and was whipped, "Not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done." As the leader of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee enslaved all of the Black Union soldiers he captured as well as free Black Pennsylvanians his army encountered.

As the author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson enshrined the ideals that made this nation. Jefferson's words formed our national identity as free people and marked a departure in human affairs. A 19th-century Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth, called the American Declaration of Independence "the noblest, happiest page in mankind's history."

Was Jefferson a hypocrite? Oh, yes. One of history's most flamboyant. He owned slaves and almost certainly fathered children with his dead wife's half sister, Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman. But he never defended the institution (as Lee did), quite the contrary. He wrote, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

Do we overlook Jefferson's shameful private behavior? No, but we take him in full. His contribution to human liberty, despite his personal behavior, entitles him to a place of honor. There will always be an asterisk, but to say that statues honoring him "shouldn't exist," as the New York City assemblyman did, is to dismiss the Declaration, the American anthem.

As for George Washington, there would have been no nation to criticize or lionize without him. If Jefferson was the poet laureate of liberty, Washington was the living exemplar of republican virtue. Having led the revolution, he could have proclaimed himself king or dictator. Some urged him to do so. When King George III was told by the American artist Benjamin West that Washington intended to resign and return to private life after winning his country's freedom, the king said, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

He was. Many a revolutionary leader came after him. Most became despots in turn. None has achieved his greatness.

Yes, Washington held human beings in bondage, and that was terrible. Owning slaves is a blight on his record, but the rest shines bright. No nation that has judgment — and gratitude — can fail to honor him forever.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her most recent book is Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense."To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: mercuryatlasnine at Pixabay

How Trump’s Criminality Harkens Back To The Violence Of The Confederacy

How Trump’s Criminality Harkens Back To The Violence Of The Confederacy

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Donald Trump broke new ground as the first president—the first American, period—to be impeached twice. However, thinking of him solely in those terms fails by a long shot to capture how truly historic his crimes were. Forget the number of impeachments—and certainly don't be distracted by pathetic, partisan scoundrels voting to acquit—The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote (Twice) is the only president to incite a violent insurrection aimed at overthrowing our democracy—and get away with it.

But reading those words doesn't fully and accurately describe the vile nature of what Trump wrought on Jan. 6. In this case, to paraphrase the woman who should've been the 45th president, it takes a video.

Although it's difficult, I encourage anyone who hasn't yet done so to watch the compilation of footage the House managers presented on the first day of the impeachment trial. It left me shaking with rage. Those thugs wanted not just to defile a building, but to defile our Constitution. They sought to overturn an election in which many hadn't even botheredthemselves to vote.

What was their purpose? In their own words, as they screamed while storming the Capitol: "Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!" Those were the exact same words they had chanted shortly beforehand during the speech their leader gave at the Ellipse. He told them to fight for him, and they told him they would. And then they did.

Many of those fighting for Trump were motivated by a white Christian nationalist ideology of hate—hatred of liberals, Jews, African Americans, and other people of color. Most of that Trumpist mob standsdiametrically opposed to the ideals that really do make America great—particularly the simple notion laid down in the Declaration of Independence that, after nearly 250 years, we've still yet to fully realize: All of us are created equal. The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was but another battle in our country's long-running race war.

As Rev. William Barber explained just a few days ago: "White supremacy, though it may be targeted at Black people, is ultimately against democracy itself." He added: "This kind of mob violence, in reaction to Black, brown, and white people coming together and voting to move the nation forward in progressive ways, has always been the backlash."

Barber is right on all counts. White supremacy's centuries-long opposition to true democracy in America is also the through-line that connects what Trump has done since Election Day and on Jan. 6 to his true historical forebears in our history. Not the other impeached presidents, whose crimes—some more serious than others—differed from those of Trump not merely by a matter of degree, but in their very nature. Even Richard Nixon, as dangerous to the rule of law as his actions were, didn't encourage a violent coup. That's how execrable Trump is; Tricky Dick comes out ahead by comparison.

Instead, Trump's true forebears are the violent white supremacists who rejected our democracy to preserve their perverted racial hierarchy: the Southern Confederates. It's no coincidence that on Jan. 6 we saw a good number of Confederate flags unfurled at the Capitol on behalf of the Insurrectionist-in-Chief. As many, including Penn State history professor emeritus William Blair, have noted: "The Confederate flag made it deeper into Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, than it did during the Civil War."

As for that blood-soaked, intra-American conflict—after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, 11 Southern states refused to accept the results because they feared it would lead to the end of slavery. They seceded from the Union and backed that action with violence. Led by their president, Jefferson Davis, they aimed to achieve through the shedding of blood what they could not at the ballot box: to protect their vision of a white-dominated society in which African Americans were nothing more than property.

Some, of course, will insist the Civil War began for other reasons, like "states' rights," choosing to skip right past the words uttered, just after President Lincoln's inauguration, by Alexander Stephens, who would soon be elected vice president of the Confederacy. Stephens describedthe government created by secessionists thusly: "Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

In the speech he gave at his 1861 inauguration, Lincoln accurately diagnosed secession as standing in direct opposition to democracy.

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

Davis, Stephens, and the rest of the Confederates spent four long years in rebellion against democracy and racial equality. In 1865, Lincoln was sworn in for a second term. On the ballot the previous year had been his vision, laid out at Gettysburg, of a war fought so that our country might become what it had long claimed to be, namely a nation built on the promise of liberty and equality for every American. Lincoln's vision won the election. He planned to lead the Union to final victory and, hopefully, bring that vision to life. Instead, John Wilkes Booth shot the 16th president to death.

Why did Booth commit that violent act, one that sought to remove a democratically elected president? Look at his own written words: "This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. And looking upon African Slavery from the same stand-point held by the noble framers of our constitution. I for one, have ever considered (it) one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation."

As author and Washington College historian Adam Goodheart explains, Booth was "motivated by politics and he was especially motivated by racism, by Lincoln's actions to emancipate the slaves and, more immediately, by some of Lincoln's statements that he took as meaning African Americans would get full citizenship." When Booth opened fire, his gun was aimed at not just one man, but at the notion of a multiracial, egalitarian democracy itself.

Trump may not have pulled a trigger, bashed a window, or attacked any police officers while wearing a flag cape, but he shares the same ideology, motive, and mindset as his anti-democratic, white supremacist forebears. They didn't like the result of an election, and were ready and willing to use violence to undo it. Secession, assassination, insurrection. These are three sides of a single triangle.

I hope, for the sake of our country and the world, we never have another president like Donald Trump. I hope we as a people—or at least enough of us—have learned that we cannot elect an unprincipled demagogue as our leader.

A person without principle will never respect, let alone cherish, the Constitution or the democratic process. A person without principle can only see those things as a means to gain or maintain a hold on power. A person without principle believes the end always justifies the means.

That's who Trump is: a person without principle. That's why he lied for two months after Election Day, why he called for his MAGA minions to come to Washington on the day Joe Biden's victory was to be formally certified in Congress, and why he incited an insurrection on that day to prevent that certification from taking place. His forces sought nothing less than the destruction of American democracy.

For those crimes, Trump was impeached, yes. But those crimes are far worse than those committed by any other president. Regardless of the verdict, those crimes will appear in the first sentence of his obituary. They are what he will be remembered for, despite the cowardice of his GOP enablers. Forever.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

#EndorseThis: John Oliver Reveals The Ugly Reality Behind The ‘Lost Cause’ Cult

#EndorseThis: John Oliver Reveals The Ugly Reality Behind The ‘Lost Cause’ Cult

Understanding why monuments to the Confederacy ought to be removed or changed is easier if you’re aware that the South seceded to preserve slavery. But as John Oliver reveals, most Americans are woefully ignorant of that basic fact and so much more about the Civil War — which allows them to dismiss the pain that the “lost cause” cult inflicts on black Americans, their fellow citizens.

That reluctance to deal with reality is not solely found among Klansman and their like. Indeed, as Oliver demonstrates here, even the smart and sophisticated may have no idea how their own ancestors were implicated in the slave trade. And he has dug up plenty of remarkable footage, as usual — including 1972 video of Vice President Spiro Agnew speaking at the dedication of the monument at Stone Mountain, GA, where the KKK was founded.