Press Release: September 29, 2024

 Mindy Pechenuk, candidate for Oakland City Council At Large

Democratic Party Should Apologize for Slavery

by Andrea Ingraham, author of “The Lincoln Revolution in California”

Recently Governor Newspeak signed a bill authorizing the state of California to apologize for slavery. It is time for a few truths to be illuminated.

1. Slavery was brought to America by the European empires - Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British. Any attempts in the North American colonies to restrict or abolish slavery were severely crushed by the British King. 

2. Far from America inventing slavery, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were the first governing documents in history to declare all men created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. Slavery and other forms of servitude were the norm throughout all prior history.

3. After the Constitution was implemented a protracted battle was waged by many heroic and courageous individuals and groups to eliminate slavery state by state and in the country as a whole. This culminated in the victory of the Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

In the case of California, and generally, if anyone is to apologize for slavery it is the Democratic Party. Slavery was never legal in California, but that did not stop the Southern dominated leadership of the Democratic Party from doing everything in their power to promote the pro- slavery cause. California Senator Gwin, who still owned a plantation in Mississippi, sided with the Southern Democrats in the Senate on all legislation. More than that, he ran the state party top down and through federal patronage appointed his men to all top positions in the state. In the state legislature, his flunkies pushed bills like a negro exclusion bill, a foreign miners tax, a tougher fugitive slave law. All of these were fought by fearless Democrat from New York, David Broderick, who was eventually elected to the US Senate. The southern dominated party power pulled out all stops to slander, attack and finally murder Broderick. 

During the 1850s a powerful faction of Democrats passed a bill to split the state in two, in order to open the southern territory to slavery. In the face of disunion, prominent Democrats campaigned for California to secede from the union along with the slave states.

Meanwhile, patriotic Americans fought relentlessly to keep California in the Union and support the Federal Government throughout the war. Republican and Lincoln ally Edward Baker fought on many fronts, including defending and winning a celebrated fugitive case in the courts and verbally annihilating Southern firebrands in the Senate. He later gave his life in the Civil War. Minister Thomas Starr King, an impassioned advocate for civil rights, traveled the state during the war whipping up pro-union and pro-war sentiment and turning the tide for Republican victories, also losing his life in the process.

Meanwhile, throughout the war, the Democratic Party press and politicians acted as a fifth column trying to sabotage the war effort every way,  attacking Lincoln, the war,  emancipation and equality.

After the War, the resurgent Democratic Party in the state legislature blocked ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments and Reconstruction measures, and fought vehemently for the Chinese Exclusion Act and every racist legislation they could write.

So, while this country was founded on a fight for freedom and equality, and many, many people fought and died to achieve it, and Americans should be proud of that, if Democrats want to blame someone for the propagation and perpetuation of slavery and its aftermath, they need only look in the mirror.