Yesterday,
Michael Cohen stated under oath that President Trump is “a racist.” Rep. Mark
Meadows “displayed” a black woman who works for the President to prove that
this allegation is unfair. Within hours, Twitter was trending videos of Rep.
Meadows in a 2012 campaign talk, saying “send Obama home to Kenya.”
That
happened yesterday.
Today, I pass along these comments by
Sen. Garrett Davis of Kentucky, made on the Senate floor on Feb. 1, 1866. He
was opposing constitutional amendments to provide equal civil right for all
people, regardless of race, and to approve birthright citizenship. Sen. Davis
lost his arguments in subsequent votes… or
did he?
“I
hold:
1. Two centuries ago, and upward, the
continent of North America was settled and taken possession of by the
Governments and people of Europe, English, Irish, Scotch, French,
Netherlanders, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Italians, Spanish, and
Portuguese, all of the white race.
2. The negro, or any other race, had no
ownership, proprietary power or government in their respective settlements—all
was exclusively with the particular European nationality that had made that
settlement….
7. No negro was made free, or had any addition
whatever to his privileges by the Articles of Confederation, or the Declaration
of Independence, or the Constitution of the United states; nor were the rights
and liberties of any free negro added by to by either of those instruments. The
condition of both free and slave negro, in every State, continued precisely the
same after the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and
the Constitution that it had been before.
8.
Naturalization is the admission by Government of a foreigner to the privileges,
or a portion of the privileges, of a citizen. Before the present Constitution
this power was exercised by each State for itself, which produced diverse and
discordant systems. For the purpose of uniformity the power of naturalization
was by the States surrendered to the Government of the United States by the
Constitution. That the power was delegated and reserved to the extent that
States had exercised. That they had exercised it only to naturalize foreigners,
and foreigners of the European nationalities; and the United States receiving
from them this power as they always had exercised it were also limited to
foreigners of the European branches of the Caucasian race.
9.
That the fundamental, original, and universal principle upon which our system
of government rests, is that it was founded by and for white men; and that it
has always belonged to and managed by white men; and that to preserve and
administer it now and forever is the right and mission and mission of white men.
When a negro or Chinaman is attempted to be obtruded into it, the sufficient
cause to repel him is that he is a negro or Chinamen.
Feb.
1, 1866, 1866 Cong. Globe 575, 39th Cong., 1st Sess, available here http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=070/llcg070.db&recNum=680
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