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The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife ... would have long since been obliterated in this state, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.1
THE QUOTATION ABOVE WAS written by Senator Hiram Revels in 1875. Who were these people that were attempting to “inculcate a hatred between the races” down South? Those raised upon standard liberal propaganda surely must believe this “inculcating of hate” must be coming from an evil Southern KKK type. If, on the other hand, one has mostly freed himself from liberal propaganda by daily doses of information from conservative “talking heads” such as Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, and company, you would likely believe this hate is being inculcated by evil white Southern Democrats. Yet, both the liberal and the conservative answer to this question are incorrect.2
Hiram Revels was the first African-American elected to the United States Senate. Revels was a Republican Senator from Mississippi. He was born in North Carolina as a free person of color and received an education in theology. After the War he moved to Mississippi and worked in the ministry and politics. When he was elected to the Senate many Northerners expected Revels to assist the Radical Republicans in their efforts to punish the South, but they were soon disappointed. Revels understood that in punishing the white South, the black South was also being punished, i.e., harmed. After fighting for the well-being of the people of Mississippi against those who desired only to use black voters to advance the Republican agenda, Revels resigned from the Party. In a letter to President Grant, Senator Revels exposes the misuse of his people (black Southerners) by Republicans:
Senator Hiram Revels, MS. Condemned Republican efforts to foment and use racial hatred as a tool to divide the Southern people and control Congress. (Courtesy LOC)
A great portion of them [black voters] have learned that they were being used as mere tools, and, as in the late election, not being able to correct existing evils among themselves, they determined by casting their ballots against those unprincipled adventurers, to overthrow them.... My people have been told by these schemers [Republican carpetbaggers], when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. To defeat this policy, at the late election men, irrespective of race, color, or party affiliation, united, and voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest.3
As Senator Revels’ letter to Grant resigning from the Republican Party demonstrates, it was not evil white Southerners who were using the newly freed black citizens as “mere tools,” nor was it evil Democrats who were engaged in maintaining “the intellectual bondage” of these newly freed black citizens—it was the Republican Party and the ruling elite in Washington. Fast forward 150 years and today it is the Democrats who are using the black voter “in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office and its emoluments.” Is the “modern” Republican doing anything to expose this misuse and abuse of African-Americans by the Democrats? No, they are upset that the Dems have stolen “their” black voters and are doing everything possible to win back their black voters—thus we have Republican Governor Nikki Haley’s attack upon all things Confederate. As most tyrants understand, hate is a powerful weapon. Hate, as a weapon, has a long history of being used by the North against the South.
