Editor,
Gen. John Frémont, the first New Republican Party Presidential nominee of 1856, issued the first emancipation proclamation, freeing the Rebel owners’ slaves in Missouri which he had placed under Martial Law as 11 States had declared secession, formed their own Confederacy and attacked Fort Sumter.
Frémont declared he would kill all rebel soldiers for acts of treason. President Lincoln directly ordered Frémont to modify his declarations, and fired him when he refused. Lincoln had already tried to offer the right to continue slave ownership under a separate flag and confederacy, but was rejected by the CSA.
The War was over the right of a state to a sovereignty exceeding that of the US Constitutional government and because the Fed imposed Southern export tariffs. Frémont, having been resoundingly defeated at Bull Run, knew the war would be long and brutal, and that England, France and Spain verged on recognizing the CSA government as legitimate. Those nations favored slowly phasing out slavery, so Gen. Frémont’s political calculation using emancipation was intended to prevent that.
Use of symbols and heritage statues did not occur post war, as the rebellion was an act of treason. The “North Virginia Battle Flag,” commonly called the “Confederate Flag,” was rejected by the CSA government. It was introduced as a political symbol after it was copyrighted by a white supremacist, Confederate heritable military order in 1890s.
Most Confederate statuary was also raised as a political act, while state legal structure was abused to restrict rights of blacks. These Jim Crow laws, racial profiling, and the eugenics movement of early 1900s became, by the 1920s, state abuse of marriage laws mandating 99% Caucasian “blood purity” to be labeled white, and for permission to marry a white. All other persons were labeled “colored” as example, by the state of Virginia.
Resurgent KKK, racial identity, marriage laws, immigration and birth control-forced sterilization were all exploited as political tools for single Party supremacy. Their direct corollary and purpose in today’s politics, including conscription of LGBT marriage rights and female equality, anti-abortion/birth control as a form of “forced birth” in service to both State and Christian Church “religious” goals, all to serve a singular supreme political Party and its ideology.
Laura L Coker