Having written extensively on the Republican Party's abolition of slavery, I was looking forward to touring the African-American Civil War Museum.
It was the Republican Party that authorized, despite Democrat objections, enlisting African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. It was a Republican governor who established, despite Democrat objections, the celebrated 54th Massachusetts regiment of African-American soldiers in which served two of Frederick Douglass' sons. It was a Democrat president, Andrew Johnson, who rid the army, despite Republican objections, of nearly all African-American soldiers in the South just a few years later. And, President Johnson (D-TN) refused to permit African-American troops to march in the Grand Review at war's end.
Facts matter not to the directors of the museum. At its grand opening, all the honored guests were Democrats: http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2011/07/african-american-civil-war-museum.html
Nonetheless, seeing the historical objects on display seemed worthwhile.
My visit lasted only a few seconds. Just a glimpse of this image of Barack Obama in the lobby sent me straight out the door. As a Democrat, Obama is a member of the Party of Slavery. By honoring a member of the Party of the Confederacy, the museum dishonors the memory of two hundred thousand African-Americans who fought for freedom during the Civil War.
"Every unregenerate rebel lately in arms against his government calls himself a Democrat... Every man who labored for the rebellion in the field, who murdered Union prisoners by cruelty and starvation, who conspired to bring about civil war in the loyal states, who invented dangerous compounds to burn steamboats and Northern cities, who contrived hellish schemes to introduce into Northern cities the wasting pestilence of yellow fever, calls himself a Democrat.
Every wolf in sheep's clothing, who pretends to preach the gospel but proclaims the righteousness of manselling and slavery; every one who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat.
Every New York rioter in 1863 who burned up little children in colored asylums, who robbed, ravished and murdered indiscriminately in the midst of a blazing city for three days and nights, called himself a Democrat. In short, the Democratic Party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle, into which is emptied every element of treason North and South, and every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age.
Senator Oliver Morton, 1866"
UPDATE: Hari Jones, curator of the museum, posted to my article about the museum opening, a courteous comment about this article:
"Dear Michael Zak,
Content is very important, and facts really matter to this museum curator. The shame and "disgrace" is that you did not explore the American story presented in the museum. The contents of the gift shop, which is where you saw the image of the President of the United States, should not be the way you judge a museum. Sadly, some Americans have become so partisan that they cannot read beyond the cover of a book or more literally an image in a gift shop.
I do recommend you go beyond the gift shop and read the work of and listen to the lectures of a fellow member of your party who wrote the script and selected 95% of the images in the museum.
If you had gone beyond the museum's gift shop, you would have learned the fact that the Massachusetts regiment was not "the first regiments of African-American soldiers" as you have been led to believe. It was the ninth African American regiment to be organized. The first African American regiment was organized in Louisiana and mustered into the Union Army in September 1862 by General Benjamin Butler, who happened to be a Democrat at the time. American regiments of African descent in South Carolina and Kansas had also been organized before Massachusetts even began recruiting. Also Andrew Johnson did not get rid of America's African descent soldiers. Under his administration, they became 40% of the regular army's infantry and cavalry. However, as a Republican, I am proud to report that General Grant and the Republicans in Congress were directly responsible for this fact.
As the curator and assistant director of the African American Civil War Museum, I appreciate that these facts matter. Indeed, I ensured that such facts and other facts, which have been suppressed by Democrats and Republicans over the past hundred years, are in our exhibit because facts matter. Yet, sadly you chose not to learn these facts that you are clearly ignorant of because of a single image you saw in the museum gift shop. Partisan behavior prevented you from being properly educated by the Republican who wrote the exhibit script.
I personally look forward to educating you on this subject in order to help you understand the facts. I realize that your error was one of ignorance, and our museum will be happy to relieve you of that burden.
Hari Jones
Curator, African American Civil War Museum'
I've made some corrections, in accordance to his email. Yes, there were a few regiments of African-American troops before the 54th Massachusetts, but they were organized by local commanders and were not authorized by federal law. Not until the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect did the Union Army officially recognize these units. President Johnson (and yes, General Grant, too) removed African-American troops from the South soon after the war. It was a Republican congressman, Isaac Hawkins, who wrote the law setting up the Buffalo Soldiers, who would constitute 40% of the army -- Johnson had nothing to do with the law other than not vetoing it.
The issues Mr. Jones raises are peripheral to my observation that his museum honors the Party of Slavery. I never made it to the gift shop. Rather, the life-size poster of the leader of the Party of the Confederacy, Barack Obama, greets visitors as they enter the museum. President Obama, has he ever apologized for being a member of the Party of the Ku Klux Klan? Why hasn't he resigned from the Party of Jim Crow?
At the museum opening, all the honored guests were proud members of the Party of Slavery. Speaking of content and facts, here is what Senator Morton observed about the party of Senator Jim Webb, Senator Mary Landrieu, Representative Jesse Jackson, Delegate Eleanor Norton Holmes and Mayor Vincent Gray:
"The Democratic Party has committed a crime for which history has no pardon... It committed treason against liberty in behalf of slavery, against civilization in behalf of barbarism."
A reader emailed me this comment: "Great article. Knowing history, I would have walked out too. Too many are willfully ignorant."
The museum's bias in favor of the Party of Slavery is not surprising, given that it was financed by the all-Democrat DC City Council.
Another reader posted this comment:
"I applaud you for expressing your discontent with the life-sized image of Barack Obama by walking out of the museum."Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. He is also the author of the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar. His Grand Old Partisan website celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. See www.grandoldpartisan.com for more information.
Great article, Michael.
I applaud you for expressing your discontent with the life-sized image of Barack Obama by walking out of the museum. By placing his image anywhere in the museum, its curators incorrectly co-opt the entire war to the cause of the Democrat party. While I have many mixed feelings on the causes and outcomes of the war, I believe that those who fought and died for freedom did so valiantly. Barack Obama did not serve in the military, and instead of fighting for mankind’s freedom, he seeks to enslave us under a civilian army, “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as our military, and under a government-imposed healthcare program that violates the conscience rights and fundamental liberties of every American.
Mr. Jones, while perhaps endowed with a knowledge of trivia, is clearly burdened himself with a lack of appreciation for the truth of the motivation for the war and its only possible justification: a God-fearing movement that saw the enslavement of other human beings as a violation of our founding principles of liberty and of God’s divine will. Even more troubling is the fact that he fails to present that truth to visitors to his museum. Yet what else is to be expected of institutions paid for by public funds in the heavily Progressive-controlled District of Columbia: a city that was once majority Black, but which is now losing its Black population to an ever-growing politically socialist and religiously irreverent group that has seized control of the Democrat Party and is exemplified by that image which drove you away—Barack Obama.
Sincerely,
Robert Broadus
www.justiceandliberty.us
Posted by: Robert Broadus | October 19, 2011 at 04:48 PM