I have been seeking a good analogy for Congressman Tom Tancedo, Republican from Colorado. Tom wants to build a 700 mile long high tech wall built between the U.S. and Mexico, much like that other expensive failure, the Great Wall of China. And what the heck ever happened to the Berlin Wall, not
to mention the rest of the Iron Curtain? If they had worked, don’t you think they would still be around? Tom considers all 12 million estimated illegal immigrants to be felons, and wants them arrested and locked up. Tom considers a ‘Guest Worker Program” a form of surrender. Not that Tom is xenophobic or a racist. He insists he is not.
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But, Tom, that just leaves stupid.
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But exactly what is Tom’s felony-ship of America supposed to achieve? He told a crowd in Iowa last weekend, where he is running second in the polls to Mit Romney, “This is our culture. Fight for it!” And in that call to the culture war I suddenly realized who Tom Tancedo reminds me of; William Lowneds Yancy, another firebrand who considered compromise a form of defeat.
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Yancey’s South Carolina family were strongly pro-Federalist, and at an Independence Day celebration in 1834 the young man told a crowd, “Listen, not
then, my countrymen, to the voice which whispers…that Americans…can no longer exist…citizens of the same republic…” And he championed the Federal Union as editor of the “Greenville Mountaineer”, at least until 1835, when he married an Alabama widow with an Alabama plantation and 35 slaves. The ownership of slaves converted Yancey to pro-slavery, and the Panic of 1837, which wiped cotton prices and Yancey’s newfound fortune and social status and converted him into a radical.
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Yancey went back to what he knew, and in 1838 he bought a failing paper and his first editorial was a passionate defense of slavery. He even favored reopening the slave trade with Africa, which had been closed down by British Naval patrols since 1819. Yancey opposed the compromises of 1850, which sought to establish a balance between slave states and “free” states to avoid a civil war. Anything short of total domination by slave states was not a victory, in Yancey’s view.
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to mention the rest of the Iron Curtain? If they had worked, don’t you think they would still be around? Tom considers all 12 million estimated illegal immigrants to be felons, and wants them arrested and locked up. Tom considers a ‘Guest Worker Program” a form of surrender. Not that Tom is xenophobic or a racist. He insists he is not.*
But, Tom, that just leaves stupid.
*
But exactly what is Tom’s felony-ship of America supposed to achieve? He told a crowd in Iowa last weekend, where he is running second in the polls to Mit Romney, “This is our culture. Fight for it!” And in that call to the culture war I suddenly realized who Tom Tancedo reminds me of; William Lowneds Yancy, another firebrand who considered compromise a form of defeat.
*
Yancey’s South Carolina family were strongly pro-Federalist, and at an Independence Day celebration in 1834 the young man told a crowd, “Listen, not
then, my countrymen, to the voice which whispers…that Americans…can no longer exist…citizens of the same republic…” And he championed the Federal Union as editor of the “Greenville Mountaineer”, at least until 1835, when he married an Alabama widow with an Alabama plantation and 35 slaves. The ownership of slaves converted Yancey to pro-slavery, and the Panic of 1837, which wiped cotton prices and Yancey’s newfound fortune and social status and converted him into a radical.*
Yancey went back to what he knew, and in 1838 he bought a failing paper and his first editorial was a passionate defense of slavery. He even favored reopening the slave trade with Africa, which had been closed down by British Naval patrols since 1819. Yancey opposed the compromises of 1850, which sought to establish a balance between slave states and “free” states to avoid a civil war. Anything short of total domination by slave states was not a victory, in Yancey’s view.
*
The true nature if the man was revealed, also in 1838, when an alleged political insult led to a street brawl between Yancey and his wife’s uncle. He wrote later, “, Reared with the spirit of a man…and taught to preserve inviolate my honor…”, Yancey shot the man dead on the street. He was convicted of manslaughter but served only a few months before being pardoned. His reputation as a hot head did nothing to prevent him from being elected to first the Alabama legislature and then, in 1844, like Mr. Tancredo, to the House of Representatives.
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In 1858 Yancey wrote what Horace Greeley called, ‘The Scarlett Letter’, in which he pledged that he and the other “fire eaters” would, “…fire the Southern heart – instruct the Southern mind - …and at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton states into revolution.” This was why Yancey was called the “Orator of Secession”. He worked hard to split his own (Democratic) party on the issue, believing the election of a Republican (anti-slavery) presidential candidate in 1860 would radicalize the south. He was, in the words of that genius Bruce Catton, “…one of the men tossed up by the tormented decade of the 1850’s (John Brown was another) who could help to bring catastrophe on but not do anything more than that.”
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That the North had twice the population of the South, that the North had ten times the industrial and agricultural capacity, that slavery was already dieing in the South, that
the North would not fight to end slavery but would fight to preserve the union, that Lincoln did not believe the Federal government had the power or the right to outlaw slavery, all this meant nothing to Yancey. Yancey wanted secession not despite its self destructive effects but, it seemed, almost because of them.
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Once war broke out Jefferson Davis sent Yancey to England to seek recognition. The Prime Minister eventually met with Yancey, asking if he had been serious about his call for a resumption of the slave trade. Yancey denied it, but
that question was the end of any chance that England would recognize the South. Yancey returned home and served in the Confederate Senate, opposing Davis’ power to draft troops and blocking Davis’ attempt to form a Confederate Supreme Court in the spring if 1863. It was during debate over the Court when Yancey and Benjamin Hill of Georgia got into a brawl on the Senate floor. Hill grabbed the only weapon at hand, an inkstand, with which he hit Yancey on the head, to stop Yancey from pulling his gun. The Confederate Senate censured Yancey and took no action against Hill. So it must have been William Yancey whom Davis was thinking of when he said the epitaph of the Confederacy should be, “Died of a Theory.’
*
In 1858 Yancey wrote what Horace Greeley called, ‘The Scarlett Letter’, in which he pledged that he and the other “fire eaters” would, “…fire the Southern heart – instruct the Southern mind - …and at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton states into revolution.” This was why Yancey was called the “Orator of Secession”. He worked hard to split his own (Democratic) party on the issue, believing the election of a Republican (anti-slavery) presidential candidate in 1860 would radicalize the south. He was, in the words of that genius Bruce Catton, “…one of the men tossed up by the tormented decade of the 1850’s (John Brown was another) who could help to bring catastrophe on but not do anything more than that.”
*
That the North had twice the population of the South, that the North had ten times the industrial and agricultural capacity, that slavery was already dieing in the South, that
the North would not fight to end slavery but would fight to preserve the union, that Lincoln did not believe the Federal government had the power or the right to outlaw slavery, all this meant nothing to Yancey. Yancey wanted secession not despite its self destructive effects but, it seemed, almost because of them.*
Once war broke out Jefferson Davis sent Yancey to England to seek recognition. The Prime Minister eventually met with Yancey, asking if he had been serious about his call for a resumption of the slave trade. Yancey denied it, but
that question was the end of any chance that England would recognize the South. Yancey returned home and served in the Confederate Senate, opposing Davis’ power to draft troops and blocking Davis’ attempt to form a Confederate Supreme Court in the spring if 1863. It was during debate over the Court when Yancey and Benjamin Hill of Georgia got into a brawl on the Senate floor. Hill grabbed the only weapon at hand, an inkstand, with which he hit Yancey on the head, to stop Yancey from pulling his gun. The Confederate Senate censured Yancey and took no action against Hill. So it must have been William Yancey whom Davis was thinking of when he said the epitaph of the Confederacy should be, “Died of a Theory.’*
Yancey immediately returned to Alabama where he died in July of 1863, just 2 weeks before his 49th birthday, having lived just long enoug
h to see the double defeats of Vicksburg and Gettysburg that doomed the Confederacy which Yancey had done so much to create. The product of his life’s work was the deaths of 600,000 young men and perhaps a million civilians, total abolition of slavery in America and the ultimate victory of Federalism over State’s Rights. It is an estate Representative Tancedo might take note of, had he the intellectual honesty to do so.
Yancey immediately returned to Alabama where he died in July of 1863, just 2 weeks before his 49th birthday, having lived just long enoug
h to see the double defeats of Vicksburg and Gettysburg that doomed the Confederacy which Yancey had done so much to create. The product of his life’s work was the deaths of 600,000 young men and perhaps a million civilians, total abolition of slavery in America and the ultimate victory of Federalism over State’s Rights. It is an estate Representative Tancedo might take note of, had he the intellectual honesty to do so. 
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