Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 29
referendum, the slaveholders sent squatters, packed ballots, cheated, lied, stole and
murdered so blatantly that even their supporters in the federal government could not
defend them. Criticism prevailed despite the fact that in response to these abuses some
extreme abolitionists resorted to violence themselves. Events in the next five years
destroyed the Democratic and Whig parties, the latter forever. The public was so
enraged that a new political party, the Republican Party, became the largest party
practically overnight. The old leaders faded away. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected
president and the south refused to accept the established election rules and the results
they yielded, deciding instead to secede. War ensued.
It must be noted that the sketchy summary I made above of the South’s
counterproductive push for expansion in an “all or nothing” gamble for supremacy
occurred under the friendly umbrella of a federal government sympathetic to the South.
Despite this soto-voce protection, their system was so odious that it continued to lose
acceptance. The more isolated the slaveholders became, the more compulsive they
grew in their push for growth.
How the southerners justified their 1776 rebellion against English oppression and in
1861 fought to preserve their abominable dominance over their slaves is one of the
greatest contradictions of history. Their obdurate determination to consider blacks as
sub-humans had long been rejected by most of the western world. In my opinion their
selfish economic interest over-rode any moral, religious or social concern. Their taste of
control of the instruments of power made them ever more arrogant and demanding.
From 1789 to 1860, a 71-year period, a slaveholder had been president for forty-nine
years, which is 70 % of the time. Slave owners had always controlled the Supreme
Court; twenty-four out of thirty-six House Speakers had owned slaves, as well as
twenty-five out of thirty-seven Vice Presidents. In my view it is almost a miracle how the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution survived for all the people.
Much is said about the incongruence of Lincoln’s policy that on the one hand denied the
southern states the right to secede and on the other paid homage to the need for
consent of the governed as a prerequisite for any valid law. My interpretation is that he
saw the consent of the governed implicit in the ratification of the constitution by all the
states. He also read and understood the clear statement of the Declaration of
Independence that unequivocally states, “All men are created equal,” and took seriously
the first written purpose of the Constitution, “to make a more perfect union.” Thus, he
saw instead an incongruence in the Confederate position that wanted to continue
existing in supremacy over non-whites without granting the suppressed the right to
consent to their supression. This position was opposed to both “All men are created
equal” and to ”consent of the governed.” He also, rightly in my opinion, found that the
union could not be more perfect by destroying it.
I perceive the success consolidated through the Civil War as a historical
accomplishment of the first magnitude, unequaled in human history. Comparable in
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