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Dear Senator Reid: Those Who Forget History Are Condemned to Repeat It!

Slavery "Gag Rule," Dithering on Woman Suffrage Unknown to Dem Leader

November 22, 2009       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Harry Reid
 

Poor Harry Reid!

The United States senator from Nevada, and reigning Democratic majority leader, did not know that the Congress refused to debate slavery for nine years.

And he failed to recognize that Congress delayed voting on the right of women to vote for 70 years.

What's more, he broadcast his ignorance for the entire world to witness in his speech after the Health Care bill was approved on Saturday.

Senator Reid said:

"Imagine if instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities a right to vote, those who disagreed were muted, discussion was killed.?"

He was making reference to the 39 Republican votes against debating the health care bill. But he didn't really have the facts, thereby missing the point. Congress has a long record of avoiding vital issues, of not allowing debate. The world's greatest deliberative body, as it has been called, often is extremely balky about deliberating.

Well, sir, discussion of slavery, which included the right to vote, was killed from 1836 to 1844.

In fact the word slavery could not even be mentioned on the floor of the House or Senate. Southerners even put a price on the head of a Northern member of Congress for using his franking (postage) privilege to mail out anti-slavery information. Such action was considered a violation of the "gag rule" against Members discussing slavery.

Well, actually, Senator Reid, we did debate slavery. It lasted four years. The debate began at Fort Sumter in 1860 and ended at Appomattox in 1865. It was called the Civil War. Ever heard of it?

After 70 years of agitation by women seeking the right to vote, on January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the proposed constitutional amendment. The next day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment, but the Senate refused to debate it until October. Then the Senate defeated the Amendment by three votes.

In response, the National Woman's Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage Senators up for reelection in the 1918 midterm elections. Following those elections, most members of Congress were in favor of women's suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89 and the Senate followed suit on June 4, by a vote of 56 to 25.

On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee General Assembly, by a one-vote margin became the 36th state legislature to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, making it a part of the U.S. Constitution. On August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment's adoption.

The hue and cry is heard constantly about the lack of knowledge of American history on the part of young people.

How about the abysmal lack of knowledge of American history on the part of a leader of the U.S. Senate!

Good heavens to Myrgatroyd!!! Philomena and Hortense, too!

Senator Reid, 70, a native of Searchlight, Nevada, attended the University of Utah and the University of Southern Utah. He earned a law degree from George Washington University Law School.

But, somewhere along the line he failed to learn that the U.S. Congress has been subjected to various anti-free speech measures imposed by their own members.

The Constitution guarantees citizens the right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Nineteenth-century Americans exercised this right vigorously.

Each session, Congress received petitions "respectfully," but "earnestly praying" for action. In 1834 the American Anti-Slavery Society began an antislavery petition drive. Over the next few years the number of petitions sent to Congress increased sharply. In 1837-38, when the society was headed by James G. Birney, later to become a Bay City pioneer, for example, abolitionists sent more than 130,000 petitions to Congress asking for the abolition of slavery in Washington, DC. As antislavery opponents became more insistent, Southern members of Congress were increasingly adamant in their defense of slavery.

In May of 1836 the House passed a resolution that automatically "tabled," or postponed action on all petitions relating to slavery without hearing them. Stricter versions of this gag rule passed in succeeding Congresses.

At first, only a small group of congressmen, led by Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, opposed the rule. Adams used a variety of parliamentary tactics to try to read slavery petitions on the floor of the House, but each time he fell victim to the rule.

Gradually, as antislavery sentiment in the North grew, more Northern congressmen supported Adams's argument that, whatever one's view on slavery, stifling the right to petition was wrong. In 1844 the House rescinded the gag rule on a motion made by John Quincy Adams.

I realize it is rather impertinent of a news columnist to point out to the majority leader of the U.S. Senate basic facts about national history.

But it is a pathetic note on the education and intelligence of Members of Congress that it is necessary in this case.

And it is even more distressful that a political party (the Republicans) would vote unanimously to bar debate on such an important issue as health care.

Shades of the slavery gag rule!

###

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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