A bit of a history lesson first, before I really get started. As has been previously stated by people far more eloquent than myself, our recent national turbulence has antecedents that stretch back well beyond recent times. I’ve written here before about my great-great Grandfather Camp, who despite being an Alabama native, chose to fight for the Union during the Civil War, at great personal peril to himself.
I’ve uncovered a new wrinkle in this complicated yarn. William Hugh Smith, who later became Alabama’s first Republican Governor during Reconstruction, actively recruited Southern Unionists to fight for the Stars and Stripes. But, as I have stated before, history is full of colossal ironies and counter-ironies.
From 1855 to 1859 Smith served in the Alabama House of Representatives as a "states' rights" Democrat, but he evolved into a strong Unionist. In 1862, he fled behind Union lines; he spent the rest of the war recruiting soldiers for the 1st Alabama Union Cavalry Regiment. He went with this regiment on General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous "March to the Sea".
After the war, Smith chaired the first statewide Republican convention in 1867. He was installed as Governor of Alabama by the U.S. Congress in July 1868. Although he had been elected in February 1868, Smith would not voluntarily take office due to voters failing to ratify the 1868 constitution. A conservative once in office, he supported restoration of voting rights for ex-confederate public officials and military officers, who had been temporarily disenfranchised. He took only light action against the Ku Klux Klan, arguing that local law enforcement could effectively handle the situation. He promoted economic and railroad development, for the South was behind in investing in infrastructure. Its planter elite had reserved their money for private projects.
Smith left office under an ethical cloud of corruption regarding state aid to railroads.
It would be disingenuous to suggest William Hugh Smith was a voluntary abolitionist or a believer in black suffrage. His reasons for ducking behind Northern lines during the conflict were not out of sincere, heartfelt passion for his country of origin, merely that he was afraid that secession would cost him his “property”, and by that, of course, we mean his enslaved people. As there were only slightly over 2,000 people in the 1st Alabama Calvary (Union), it is highly likely that Smith and W.A. Camp knew each other. Perhaps Smith even personally recruited Camp to the regiment. We may never know the full truth, but it makes for an interesting story.
Randolph County, Alabama, Smith’s place of origin was mostly comprised of dirt-poor yeoman farmers, but Smith was a relative anomaly. He owned a cotton plantation that relied upon the labor of enslaved people to achieve its financial ends. Only a generation prior, this had been Muscogee (Creek) land, before being forcefully displaced by our soon-to-be vacated from the $20 bill-- President Andrew Jackson.
Deep South history, long thought irrelevant to many in this country, is American History.
The names we assign to towns, buildings, structures, statues, and the like are a reflection of our own identities. They are a projection of how we view ourselves collectively—our own biases, our own hopes and aspirations, and above all, the good and the bad in each of us, collectively and individually. Returning to an earlier point, Randolph County, Alabama, where my ancestor was raised and where Smith was, too, is named after John Randolph, a firebrand Virginia U.S. Representative and Senator.
His stepfather, St. George Tucker, married his widowed mother in 1778. His maternal fourth great grandfather was Richard Bennett of Virginia, elected governor of Virginia colony during the Cromwell Protectorate and a Puritan who in 1672 was converted to the Quaker movement by George Fox.
Even more ironies. I’ve written here as well about my own Quaker faith. Quakers were some of the first to speak out about the evils of the slave system, though it is worth noting that it took time before we embraced full abolition. Some slaveholding Friends continued the practice for quite a while.
John Randolph offered pro-slavery speeches. He mocked universal emancipation as an unreliable fantasy. Speaking about Cuba, Randolph said, “It is unquestionable but this invasion will be made with this principle – this genius of universal emancipation – the sweeping anathema against the white population… And then, sir, what is the position of the southern United States?” If we should accede, “we should deserve to have negroes for our taskmasters, and for the husbands of our wives.“ (Fred Kaplan, John Quincy Adams, 407-8).
Contemporary accounts attest to his having had a belligerent and bellicose personality before the onset of any disease. [Randolph was a long-time sufferer of tuberculosis.]
Randolph fed off of the inferiority complexes of white Southerners, particularly poor farmers who felt powerless in the face of the political elite, the wealthy aristocrats who ruled state, and in many cases federal government as well. Is it any surprise then, that these political, social, and psychological elements have been passed down from generation to generation? Randolph County, Alabama, is tiny. It comprises a little under 23,000 residents and has had little to no growth for roughly the past century. Like many regions of the country that lack a lot of inflow/outflow, the same families and same attitudes persist from generation to generation.
Randolph was admired by the community and his supporters for his fiery character and was known as a man that was passionate about education. He applied rousing electioneering methods, which he also enjoyed as a hobby. Randolph appealed directly to yeomen, using entertaining and enlightening oratory, sociability, and community of interest, particularly in agriculture. This resulted in an enduring voter attachment to him. His defense of limited government appeals to modern and contemporary conservatives, most notably Russell Kirk (1918–1994).
Now we entertain the person of Alabama’s current U.S. Representative from the 5th District, Morris Jackson “Mo” Brooks. Brooks spoke at the pro-Trump rally on January 6 of this year that...I think you know the rest of the story. Brooks’ congressional district includes much of North Alabama, which was a hotbed of Southern Unionist sentiment before and after the Civil War. It was, for many years, one of the most liberal sections of the state, due in large part to the hard feelings and sense of collective disfranchisement of its constituents. Or, to put it another way, in tribute to this Black History Month, this phenomenon underscores Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s assertion, first mentioned in 1966, that noted “I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
Ah, but you say, this depends on who we say is being unheard. This depends on our understanding of the frame of mind of those who feel they have been unheard. My definition of “unheard” is more valid, historically correct, and politically motivated than yours!
Many people, both black and white, have felt unheard for a very long time. They have had their own reasons, both altruistic and selfish. But our fates are interconnected. Down here in the Deep South, blacks and whites have lived on top of each other for centuries. Though forces have sought to separate us, one can’t have that much contact for such an extended period of time and not be influenced by each other to a very large degree. I wish we could see past race sometimes, not to say that racial dynamics aren’t important, and take on the lens of class conflict as our growing American consciousness continues to ripen.