Inflating the significance of individuals and downplaying the power of political and social movements is common. Common, but wrong. “Camelot,” John Kennedy’s administration, is a good example of how a fantasy built around an individual often overtakes reality. We remember the haircut but forget that Kennedy pulled the nation deeper into Viet Nam and botched the Bay of Pigs.
Near the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death and now upon the death of Nelson Mandela, we see the same tendency to inflate the influence and power of these individuals, to ignore the social and political contexts, and to downplay their human and political faults.
Perhaps, with the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s killing so fresh, Bob Unger can be forgiven somewhat for doing the same with Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. His contention (“Lincoln’s death robbed U.S. of reconciliation”) is that if Lincoln had lived the U.S. might have been spared Reconstruction and the culture wars.
It is fair to say that the humiliation of the South and the devastating effects of Abolition to its economy, based as it was on human trafficking, led to Lincoln’s assassination. In South Carolina and Mississippi, the slave population was actually greater than the white population. In Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia, slaves represented 44%, 46%, 47%, and 48% of the total population. In Jefferson and Washington’s Virginia – in the Upper South – there was one slave for every two free whites.
Despite Mr. Unger’s contention, Reconstruction did not begin after Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865. It had begun some two years earlier. By the time of Lincoln’s death the South’s economy was in tatters and the rise of “terrorist” organizations like the KKK required a Federal response. The South’s “way of life,” not the political power of a racial elite, was at stake.
South Africa is a completely different story. White Afrikaaners were a miniscule minority (whites now account for 8% of the population) but they ran an industrialized economy and may even have had the Bomb. Mandela was the figurehead of a substantial national liberation movement – a movement of and by black South Africans. There was nothing like this among American slaves. In contrast, the War between the States was fought over tariffs, slaves (to be sure), but a variety of issues largely viewed as economic. The Civil War transformed the U.S. from an agrarian nation into an industrial one – and not only in the South.
The questions we should ask are: if Mandela had been murdered (like Steve Biko and many others) and had not been the figurehead of the ANC, would there have been another Mandela? Certainly. Because injustice would still have required a response.
And if Lincoln had lived, would he have created a national reconciliation movement that would have been able to erase the shock of the end of slavery for 8 million Southern whites? The answer is obvious as well: of course not. Pretty unlikely. And doubly unlikely that a single man could have pulled it off.
This was published in the Standard Times on December 23, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20131223/opinion/312230315
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