LET'S TALK ABOUT NATIONAL UNITY!

By Edwin Cooney

So what does this pandemic mean for our future — chaos or unity?

Last week, I asserted that we were united during the Revolutionary War era because we were determined to control our own destiny rather than be controlled by Britain. A new reader whom I'll call “Mr. Albany" points out that since there were elements of personal loyalty to Great Britain throughout the colonies, my assertion isn't so. I insist, however, that since all thirteen colonies signed the Declaration of Independence and had the wherewithal to form a federal union out of the chaos of the Articles of Confederation, I will stick to my conclusion that we were pretty well united. However, Mr. Albany's point is well taken since it causes me to be more specific with my conclusions at a time like this.

My original point was that following the attack on Pearl Harbor, both isolationists and interventionists united behind the Roosevelt administration’s war goals and efforts despite serious issue differences during the war. These issues covered everything from concentration camps for Japanese Americans, to the fate of Jews, to a coal miners' strike during the spring of 1943.

There is a difference between conflict and disunity. The threat of disunion has occurred more than once in our history. Everyone knows about the Civil War, but during the War of 1812, New England states, which had been suffering economically since the 1807 Jeffersonian trade embargo against both England and France, had had enough by 1814. That fall, as John Quincy Adams was negotiating the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium that would end the war, Federalists held a region-wide meeting in Hartford, Connecticut to pressure the Madison Administration to end the war. Historians disagree as to whether the Hartford conference meant to bring about a separation of New England from the Union, but there is general agreement that Thomas Jefferson's endorsement of the 1798 Kentucky-Virginia resolutions asserting that states had the right to leave the Union was the spirit of that conference. (Note that Jefferson was Vice President of the United States under John Adams when he endorsed that resolution.) 

Hence, there have been numerous occasions when states have threatened to leave the Union. Even today, Texas threatens to leave the Union. Texas has a clause within its original constitution that allows it to become a republic.

There has been an ongoing movement in Texas to separate from the Union as far back as the Clinton presidency in 1997. Daniel Miller is the current president of the Texas Nationalist Movement. According to Graham Wood in an article in the December 2019 Atlantic, Miller's movement is strictly nonviolent. Miller says "If the Catalonians, Scots and the Kurds....can demand independence, why can't Texans?”

However, as everyone knows, Texas has been in the Union long enough to elect two vice presidents (John Nance Garner and Lyndon Johnson) as well as give birth to two presidents, LBJ and Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Neither President Bush was born in Texas. George W. H. Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts and George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut.)

It's my guess that despite political and social clashes over everything from when the economy should be reopened to whether the president or the states have the power to do so, most Americans are anxious to start functioning again even with their fear of possible consequences

There is a distinction between rebellion and change. Although I'm convinced that we're in for some radical changes, those changes will be for the strict purpose of insuring our comfort and, insofar as possible, our convenience, rather than for whatever grievances we may have with the president, his administration, or with Congress.

Who may deserve the blame for this pandemic will without doubt be reflected throughout the coming presidential campaign. As serious as is our panic and ultimate anger over this threat to our lives and some of the lives we love the best, that panic and even resentment isn't yet strong enough to interrupt those core beliefs most Americans share in representative government, the high purposes of most of our past and present policies toward humanity, or the values behind those genuinely good intentions.

Back in the late 1960s, in the wake of the Vietnam conflict and the ultimate election of Richard Nixon, there was widespread violence on college campuses that resulted in property damage, the temporary hostage-taking of college officials, and even deaths on campuses such as Jackson State and Kent State. At the same time, militant civil rights groups such as the Black Panthers and thugs like Charles Manson as well as the Weather Underground, the militant antiwar group, were terrorizing white middle class America. By 1972, the brunt of these threats to national security was spent. Hence, by 1974, commentators were calling the student rebels who had promised revolution until school was over "sunshine revolutionists,” which real revolutionaries —be they named Washington or Mao Tse Tung — would never recognize.

Yes, indeed, mighty changes are likely in the offing. Currently, we’re passing through a time of chaos or, if you prefer, disunity, but our “states of America united” will live long beyond you and me! 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY