Who said this, when was it said, and what was it in reference to?
“Away with the idea of getting independence first, and looking after liberty afterward. Our liberties, once lost, may be lost forever.”
Answers in the full text.
Who: Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America.
When: 1863
In reference to: The suspension of habeas corpus by Jefferson Davis, and the Conscription Act passed by the Confederate Congress to build the army back up after its various losses. (Many Southerners considered forced conscription one of the basest, most evil assaults on their rights, perhaps even more evil than the suspension of habeas corpus. Jefferson Davis, moreover, was a hypocrite; after blasting Lincoln for suspending the right, he quietly did it himself several months later.)
Alexander Stephens was, despite his high rank in the Confederate government, strongly opposed to Davis’s policies, to the extent that he removed from Richmond and spent most of the war at his home in Georgia, refusing to exercise his office. Stephens and others of his ilk were later termed “impossiblists”. Their pronouncements of doom badly fractured support for the Confederate government at a time when it was most needed, and may well have assisted in its eventual defeat.
I was reading Shelby Foote’s “The Civil War: A Narrative”, volume 2, “Fredericsburg to Meridian”, last night when I ran across this quote from Stephens on page 649. I hear this plaint echoed daily by the Homeland Security antis. And I suspect that given the fact that we survived the Civil War with the vast majority of our rights intact, we will most likely survive the War on Terrorism ditto, regardless of what those opposed to the suspension of certain liberties espouse.
Make no mistake: I think Homeland Security, as currently constituted, is a joke. After my experience at BWI in July (which I have not blogged about, just accept the fact that it was enormously annoying for no clear or good reason), I refuse to fly anywhere except to South Florida at this point, and I will fly there only because it takes too long to drive there and my wife would kill me if I insisted on it.
But there is a certain wartime atmosphere that doesn’t exist in this country at this point. We are in danger of forgetting the lessons of September 11. And we are equally in danger of forgetting that this country has met adversity before and has somehow always bounced back resiliently from temporary suspensions of liberties deemed necessary for the prosecution of the war. Some things I will put up with; other things I will not accept. So far I see no liberties being suspended that I cannot accept. I still have the right to bear arms, freedom of travel, freedom of speech (except in airports, which I simply avoid), and freedom of worship.
It’s when these core rights begin to crumble that I believe we will be in serious trouble. But I just don’t see it yet.