1. This sort of thing gets to my quarrel with the term "white privilege," as if the protection of the laws is a bad thing we should dispense with, rather than a right we should expand & guarantee on an equal basis.https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1269951088964370432 …
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5. After the failed 1848 revolutions, Whigs & Northern Democrats honored Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian republican leader. Lewis Cass authored a resolution denouncing Austrian & Russian repression. Sec. State Daniel Webster wrote a pro-Kossuth biography.
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6. But Kossuth was received coolly in the South. Sen. Robert MT Hunter (D-VA, later a Confederate) complained that Cass was meddling in Austria's internal affairs. Hunter feared embracing even universal *white* republicanism due to its implications for slavery.
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7. Hunter & other Calhounist apologists had fallen far from the visions of even Founding-era slaveholders - rather than proclaim & principle & admit it then had exceptions in practice, they drifted towards letting the practice redefine & water down the principle.
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8. It is literally un-American & anti-American to view the natural rights of all human beings as unjust privileges to be renounced. That way does not lie liberty or equality, but merely a Hobbesian test of strength. I want no part of it.
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9. Precisely. The Cornerstone speech & the "mudsills" theory were all about claiming that liberty could exist only as a racial privilege for some at the expense of others, not a right for all. That was the struggle over the meaning of republicanism underlying the Civil War.https://twitter.com/AstorAaron/status/1270016935389024256 …
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