The White Freedom to Dominate Versus the Lockean/Lincolnian Liberal Tradition in America: A Response to Jefferson Cowie

Jefferson Cowie's Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for history.  It deserved the prize because it is a deftly written history of freedom understood as the freedom of white Americans to dominate others as vividly manifested in the history of Barbour County, Alabama, from the 1830s to the present.  Barbour County is in southeastern Alabama, on the Chattahoochee River bordering Georgia.  Cowie chose Barbour County because that was George Wallace's home county, and Cowie presents Wallace as the leading proponent of white freedom in resistance to federal power in the last half of the twentieth century.

Cowie's historical insight is in seeing how Wallace's assertion of American freedom as white supremacy was rooted in almost 200 years of history in Barbour County, which was a microcosm for the history of most white Americans.  Whenever the federal government has intervened to protect nonwhite people from oppression, many white Americans have resisted this as an infringement of their freedom--their freedom to dominate others.  

This supports Cowie's general argument that the history of freedom in America has been predominantly not a liberal history of all people seeking freedom from oppression but an illiberal history of white people seeking freedom to oppress others.  This then allows him to argue that the illiberal conservatism of Donald Trump's Republicans is not an unusual departure from America's liberal tradition of politics but a continuation of America's illiberal tradition of white freedom to dominate others.

There are, however, four problems with Cowie's arguments.  The first problem is that while Cowie says we need a "better freedom" than the white freedom to dominate, he never clearly explains the standard by which we might identify that "better freedom."  Abraham Lincoln argued that the best freedom--and the alternative to freedom as domination--was the equal liberty of all men affirmed in the Declaration of Independence as the fundamental principle of American politics.  But Cowie never takes this seriously.

The second problem is that Cowie ignores the importance of black armed resistance to white violence in the black struggle for freedom.

The third problem is that in arguing that the American political tradition is predominately illiberal, Cowie supports the anti-liberals who claim that only they speak for the true America.

The fourth problem is that Cowie falsely claims that the "Second Reconstruction" (the post-World-War-II Civil Rights Movement) was a complete failure because it was defeated by Wallace's "white freedom."

But before I consider those four problems, we need to survey Cowie's history of Barbour County.

BARBOUR COUNTY, 1830-2000

Cowie's illiberal history of Barbour County can be divided into four periods.  First, Barbour County originated in the 1830s from the seizure of Creek Indian land by illegal white settlers who fought federal troops who tried to enforce a federal treaty that guaranteed the land to the Creek Nation.  The federal defense of Native American rights was regarded by the white intruders as a violation of their freedom to dominate the land that they wanted to settle.  The state government of Alabama legalized the white settlers' land claims in violation of the federal treaty and justified this as an exercise in "states' rights" and resistance to federal tyranny.  After two wars with the Creek Nation, the Indians were finally forced by federal soldiers in 1836 and 1837 to move to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, which was authorized by the federal Indian Removal Act of 1830.  This began the American tradition of white freedom to dominate nonwhite people.

This also initiated the second period of Barbour County's history when the white settlers brought in their black slaves to work the land and grow cotton for the white plantation owners.  Previously, white people had asserted their freedom to dominate Indian land; now they asserted their freedom to dominate black labor.  The number of slaves in Barbour County grew rapidly, and by 1860 there were 16,150 enslaved people working for 1,143 masters.  In defense of their freedom to enslave against the tyranny of Northern abolitionists attacking slavery, the white people of Barbour County were enthusiastic in support of secession and the Confederacy in its war with the Union invaders.

Abraham Lincoln explained the Civil War as a war between two definitions of the word liberty.  Speaking in Baltimore, in the spring of 1864, he observed:

"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one.  We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.  With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor.  Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name--liberty.  And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names--liberty and tyranny."

He then expressed this thought in the form of an Aesopian fable:

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one.  Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and are professing to love liberty.  Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as sthe destruction of all liberty" (Lincoln, 2:589-90).

Cowie quotes these remarks as showing that Lincoln had "a crystal clear idea about the ideas of freedom at stake" (112).  But Cowie devotes only two paragraphs to this; and he says nothing about how Lincoln had justified his definition of liberty--"for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor"--as grounded in the Lockean liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence.  As I have indicated in previous posts, Lincoln repeatedly affirmed this Lockean conception of individual liberty as "the principle of self-government"--"each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as he in no wise interferes with any other man's rights" (1:449).  And he set this in opposition to the slaveholders' tyrannical definition of liberty--"the liberty of making slaves of other people" (1:309).

Having issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address the following November, in which he explained the Civil War as testing the endurance of a nation born in the Declaration of Independence, and thus conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  If that nation could endure, it could have a "new birth of freedom," which was Lincoln's forecast of how the amendments to the Constitution after the war and the Reconstruction of the South would become what some historians now identify as the "Second Founding" of the United States--a renewed dedication to the Lockean principles of equal liberty in the Declaration of Independence.

This would confirm what Lincoln had said in 1857 about the principle of equal liberty in the Declaration of Independence as a "standard maxim for free society" that "even though never perfectly attained," would be "constantly approximated" in the forward movement of American history, and "thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere" (1:398).  This was Lincoln's philosophy of American moral and political history as the progressive enforcement of the Lockean liberalism of the Declaration of Independence.

Cowie says nothing about this.  He does not even mention the Gettysburg Address.  Nor does he say anything about how the letters written by soldiers in the Civil War (as collected by James McPherson) show that many of them had accepted Lincoln's interpretation of the war as a test of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  Nor does he recognize how much of the rhetoric of Reconstruction and of the Civil Rights Movement appealed to the Declaration of Independence as the fundamental statement of America's Lockean Liberal Tradition.

Cowie does recognize, however, how the surrender of the Confederacy in 1865 marked the beginning of the third period in the history of white freedom in its struggle against what white Southerners regarded as federal tyranny.  The 13th Amendment abolished slavery.  The 14th Amendment established the equal liberty of all people as citizens of the United States.  The 15th Amendment declared that the right of citizens to vote could not be denied or abridged "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."  The final section in each of these three amendments declared: "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."  This allowed the Radical Republicans who controlled Congress to order by legislation the Reconstruction of the South enforced by federal military occupation.

During Reconstruction, freedmen joined organizations--Loyal Leagues and Union Leagues--that built schools and churches while also mobilizing freedmen for political action and teaching them how to negotiate contracts for work.  All of this activity was supported by the Freedmen's Bureau--an office created by Congress and put into the control of the military.  New state governments were established, and freedmen became voters and candidates for office.  White Northerners who moved to the South and white Southerners who accepted the fall of the Confederacy supported Reconstruction and the political dominance of the Republican Party.  For the first time in human history, there was a biracial democracy.  But for many white people in Barbour County and the rest of the South, this was a denial of their freedom enforced by a military tyranny that supported the corrupt rule of the Republican Party over the southern states.

Reconstruction began with statewide conventions of blacks held throughout the South in 1865 and early 1866.  Hundreds of black leaders attended.  They demanded their rights--such as the right to bear arms, serve on juries, assemble peacefully, and vote--and they repeatedly justified these claims by appealing to the Declaration of Independence, which one speaker described as "the broadest, the deepest, the most comprehensive and truthful definition of human freedom that was ever given to the world."  One gathering declared: "By the Declaration of Independence, we believe these are rights which cannot be justly denies us."  Other speakers portrayed the Civil War and emancipation as events in the forward march of "progressive civilization" as embodying "the fundamental truths laid down in the great charter of Republican liberty, the Declaration of Independence."  One observer said in 1868 that "the colored people had read the Declaration until it had become part of their natures."  By the end of 1867, almost all black voters in the South were enrolled in a Union League or some other similar local organization.  It was common at these meetings to have a Bible, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and an anvil or other symbol of labor laying on a table.  Radical Republican leaders of Reconstruction like Charles Sumner claimed that the Declaration of Independence ought to have equal legal standing with the Constitution, so that "anything for human rights is constitutional" (Foner 1988: 110-115, 232, 283, 317, 320; Foner 2019: 13-14, 19).  Cowie says nothing about this.

There were violent attacks on Reconstruction from its beginning in 1865.  The peak of this violence was the Colfax Massacre on Easter Sunday 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana.  After a contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and local offices, there were violent battles between white and black militia groups.  In Colfax, 60 to 150 black militia men were murdered after they had surrendered to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and Ku Klux Klansmen.  This example became contagious as angry white people joined violent mobs and militia groups that formed what was called the "White Line" to stop Reconstruction.

In Barbour County, this violent movement erupted in the election of 1874.  In Eufaula, the largest city in Barbour County, as many as 80 to 160 black people trying to vote were shot.  Hundreds of people fled from the violence and were not able to vote.  This depressed the Republican vote in Barbour County.  The Black Republican congressman, James T. Rapier, was replaced with a Democratic white supremacist Jeremiah Williams.

Because of such violent resistance to Reconstruction by many white Southerners, support for Reconstruction in the North waned during President Grant's administration.  In 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the South, which was the effective end to Reconstruction.

This allowed white Southerners in Barbour County and across the South to restore white supremacy through the violent intimidation of blacks (such as lynching) and by finding ways to evade the three Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution.  The 13th Amendment stated: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."  Notice the exception--"except as a punishment for crime."  For white Southerners, this provided a new way to enslave blacks.  Once blacks were convicted of crimes based on flimsy charges, they could be leased out to private employers to labor without pay.  Leased convicts could be forced to pick cotton or work in coal mines under brutal conditions.  The leasing of convicts became a primary source of revenue for Southern governments.  Moreover, convicts were often charged for their own court costs, sheriff fees, jurors' fees, and costs of trial.  White businessmen could then pay off these fees, and they could take the prisoners into indentured servitude.

The 14th Amendment protects the equal liberty of all persons as citizens of the United States.  But in a series of decisions, the Supreme Court distorted the original meaning of the amendment in ways that eviscerated it so that the white supremacist regimes in the South could not be challenged in the federal courts.  For example, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ruled that laws of racial segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment if facilities were "separate but equal."

The 15th Amendment declares: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."  White Southern lawmakers found clever ways to evade this amendment.  The right to vote was not "denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," but it was denied by many other restrictions that effectively disenfranchised blacks.  To vote, one could be required to pass a literacy test, be employed for a year, show that one had never been convicted of a crime, pay a poll tax, or prove to a white voter registrar that one was not mentally or morally defective.

This rule of white supremacy prevailed in Barbour County without any serious challenges from the federal government from the end of Reconstruction to the end of World War II.  But Cowie shows that after the war, Barbour County entered a fourth period in its history, in which white segregationists had to defend their white freedom against a new civil rights movement demanding what some historians have called a "Second Reconstruction."  When Barbour County's George Wallace was elected Governor of Alabama in 1962, he became the leading defender of white freedom, not only in Alabama but across the nation.

This new period began in 1947 when President Harry Truman began to turn the federal government towards enforcing the principles of the Declaration of Independence in the American South by overturning the system of racial segregation.  Truman appointed a Committee on Civil Rights to recommend to him legislation that would advance civil rights.  The fundamental principle for the Committee's Report was stated in the words of the Declaration of Independence: "Man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights.  Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."  The italicized words show that, as the Report said, "there is no essential conflict between freedom and government" as long as government is instituted to secure freedom, and freedom means "the right of a man to manage his own affairs as he sees fit up to the point where what he does interferes with the equal rights of others."

Cowie recognizes that the Report was referring to the Declaration of Independence (295), but he does not see how the Report was embracing Lincoln's idea of the Declaration as setting the "standard maxim for free society," in which freedom for Lincoln meant that "each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as he in no wise interferes with any other man's rights," which denies freedom as domination.

In a speech before ten thousand members of the NAACP gathered at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Truman asked the Congress to follow the recommendations of the Report.  To justify the federal enforcement of individual rights, he appealed to four "inspiring charters of human rights--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation."  Cowie refers to Truman's speech, but he does not notice that Truman was endorsing the Report's Lincolnian idea of the "standard maxim for free society" as the guide for American historical progress.

Truman's "Civil Rights Program" split the delegates to the Democratic Convention in 1948 that nominated Truman for President.  Southern delegates failed to defeat a civil rights plank in the party platform.  In the debate over civil rights at the convention, Hubert Humphrey, the mayor of Minneapolis, delivered a speech that appealed to the Declaration of Independence as justifying a civil rights program that would enforce Jefferson's principle "that all men are equal" in their "right to enjoy the blessings of free government."  He declared: "to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late.  To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this:  The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights."  Cowie refers to this speech, but without noting Humphrey's invocation of the Declaration of Independence or the significance of his remark that "we are 172 years late"--pointing to 1776.

Many of the Southern delegates to the convention walked out--including half of the Alabama delegation--and they then held their own convention in Birmingham, Alabama, where they formed the States' Rights Democratic Party (the "Dixiecrats"), which nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for President.  In the election, Thurmond won Alabama along with Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.  But despite the split in the party, Truman was elected president, which was a kind of victory for his civil rights program.

This split the Democratic Party--with most northern Democrats agreeing that the principles of the Declaration of Independence required federal enforcement of a civil rights program, and many southern Democrats rejecting those principles as a violation of states' rights.

George Wallace was a young alternate delegate to the 1948 convention, but he chose to support Truman rather than join the Dixiecrats.  As a young politician, Wallace was a moderate on racial issues, and he was a protege of "Big Jim" Folsom, a New Deal populist who appealed to the Declaration of Independence as supporting racial equality (Carter 1995: 72).  Although Cowie identifies Folsom as "a believer in racial equality," he does not mention Folsom's appeal to the Declaration (299).

When Wallace ran for governor in 1958, he campaigned as a New Deal populist who was moderate on racial issues.  He was moderate enough to have the endorsement of the NAACP!  By contrast, his opponent John Patterson campaigned against racial integration, and he was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Wallace lost.  A few days after his defeat, he told a friend of his: "I was outniggered by John Peterson, and I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again."  When Wallace returned to win the governorship in 1962, he had perfected what Cowie calls Wallace's "winning formula": generate some conflict with federal authority over civil rights, and resist the feds on the grounds of "states' rights," which would generate votes for Wallace even when the feds won.  

The national reputation he won from this as a feisty fighter for Southern white freedom against federal tyranny allowed him to campaign for the presidency and to gain a large political following even in the Northern states.  But Cowie exaggerates Wallace's success in promoting white freedom and challenging the civil rights movement.  Ultimately, Wallace failed; and by the mid-1970s, Wallace was asking forgiveness from the civil rights leaders that he had previously opposed.  Wallace's rhetoric of white freedom was defeated by the more powerful Lincolnian rhetoric of equal liberty as affirmed in the Declaration of Independence.

I will explain this in my next post.

REFERENCES

Carter, Dan T. 1995. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics.  New York: Simon and Schuster.

Cowie, Jefferson.  2022. Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. New York: Basic Books.

Foner, Eric. 1988. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.  New York: Harper & Row.

Foner, Eric. 2019.  The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. New York: W. W. Norton.

Lincoln, Abraham.  1989.  Speeches and Writings. 2 vols. Ed. Don Fehrenbacher.  New York: Library of America.