Independence for Sovereignty and the Struggles for Self-Determination
During our February Valentine’s Day camp meeting Dana Casey
Jones made a presentation on Kate Cummings who was a Confederate nurse. She stated during her discussion, “Kate grew
up very conscious of her Scottish background but took on the Southerner role will
fervor (when her family moved to Mobile AL).
She wrote of the conflict between the North and the South, as similar to
Scotland’s constant struggle with England for her freedom. She was passionate about Southern rights because
of that background.” I mentioned in
closing at the meeting that my wife and I had been watching “The Outlander” on
Starz recently which is a romance series following a British woman who served
as a nurse in WWII and time traveled back to 18th century
Scotland. She falls in love and marries
a Scottish Laird of the Fraser clan, quickly appreciating and sympathizing with
their struggle to preserve their way of life and resist what they view as an
occupying British army and an illegitimate king on the throne. Obvious parallels can be drawn with those
very same issues just over one hundred years later with the Confederate states
struggle for independence. Scotland and
England were united under a common crown thru the 17th century but
the Scottish Stuart line was deposed due to Protestant-Catholic disputes early
in the 18th century which led to Scottish resistance when England
and Scotland were formerly united under the Treaty (and Acts) of Union. Armed conflict resulted and it was this
period in which The Outlander heroine found herself. Ireland and Scotland into the 19th
and 20th centuries struggled for sovereignty and in Ireland, armed
conflict, a War for Independence erupted against the British authorities
resulting in the establishment of the Irish Free State. In Scotland, the struggle for home rule and
sovereignty did not wain but did not escalate to arms in the last two hundred
years and instead took the form of devolution movements and referendums and in
a vote for the question of independence in 2014 which was narrowly
defeated. French speaking Quebec voted on
independence from Canada in 1995 with the "No" option carrying by just
54,288 votes (50.58%).
Some have stated that the War Between the States was a
second War for Independence, that very much the same impetus existed for the
Confederate states to secede as did for the colonies to declare their
Independence from Britain. “Somerset v
Stewart is a famous judgement of the Court of King’s Bench in 1772 which held
that chattel slavery was unsupported by the common law in England and Wales.
Lord Mansfield decided that “The state of slavery is of such a nature that it
is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political. It is so
odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but statute.” The judgement
involved the “discharge” of a black slave and has been recognized as “one of
the most significant milestones in the abolitionist campaign”. Some historians believe the case contributed
to increasing colonial support for separatism in the Thirteen Colonies of
British North America, by parties on both sides of the slavery question who
wanted to establish independent government and law.”
(en.m.wikepedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart) Nonetheless, while this judgement
rejected the institution of slavery in England proper, slavery in the British
colonies across the globe was widespread. “Although slaves had been sold in the American
colonies since at least 1619, slave labor did not come to represent a
significant proportion of the labor force until the last quarter of the 17th
century. After that time, the numbers of
slaves grew exponentially. By 1776,
African Americans comprised about 20% of the entire population in the 13
mainland British colonies. It is
important to remember that the North American mainland was a relatively minor
destination in the global slave trading network. Less than 4% of all African slaves were sent
to North America. The vast majority of
enslaved people ended up in sugar producing regions of Brazil and the (British)
West Indies. The widespread ownership of
slaves (throughout the colonies including the north like “Boston and Newport
(where) 20-25% of the population consisted of enslaved laborers (and…)
Philadelphia and New York supported significant enslaved populations”) had
significant implications. During battles
with Britain during the 1760s and 1770s, American patriots argued that taxing
the colonies without their consent reduced the colonists to the status of
slaves. Since individuals in all the
colonies owned slaves, this rhetoric had enormous emotional resonance
throughout the colonies and helped turn the colonists against the mother
country.” (teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/25577) But we are taught in our elementary education
that the founder’s Revolutionary War was all about taxes on tea (and the
British government’s over-reach to control the colonies) and not about
preserving their property rights (and the institution of slavery) while the War
for Southern Independence was all about their property, slaves, and not about
preserving their sovereignty and resistance to the Republican led federal government’s
over-reach. There persists the preposterous
Yankee version of history that despite the parallels throughout history of
sectional struggles for sovereignty and independence and the resistance to
central government taxation without equitable representation and distribution,
the War Between the States was singularly about emancipation of the slaves in
the Southern states.
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