We’ve long since become accustomed to Sen. Josh Hawley’s online provocations. The Missouri Republican (or perhaps his staff) is a prolific poster, one who uses Twitter not to enlighten or inform his constituents but to start fights and stir up politically useful culture wars. For the most part, we prefer to ignore his endless trolling.
Once in a while, however, Hawley posts something so mean-spirited and wildly at odds with known facts that we are compelled to respond.
It happened again this week. Hawley on Monday acknowledged the national Juneteenth holiday — which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States — with yet another bit of incitement.
“Today is a good day to remember: Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die,” Hawley wrote on Twitter.
Wrong.
We love our country. But it is incorrect that slavery came to America to die. Spain, Great Britain and France all abolished slavery ahead of the United States — and those countries accomplished that task without a bloody Civil War fought by millions who killed and died in the cause of keeping Black people in bondage.
Instead, slavery flourished here for more than two centuries.
Enslaved labor formed the backbone of the Southern economy and did the same for America’s startling economic growth during its early years. Cotton picked by enslaved workers was the country’s No. 1 export, and was shipped for Europe from ports in New York. Textile mills, banks and insurance companies across the country grew fat on the business generated by the cotton industry, and plowed the proceeds into dozens of other ventures.
As a result, says Cornell University’s Edward E. Baptist, the period between American independence and the Civil War “is when you see the U.S. go from being a colonial, primarily agricultural economy to being the second biggest industrial power in the world — and well on its way to becoming the largest industrial power in the world.”
It is no exaggeration to say that America’s economic might was built on a foundation of enslaved labor.
Slavery did eventually die in the United States, though. That was no thanks to Southern secessionists who fought to preserve their dominance over Black people. More than 620,000 lives from both sides were lost as a result. The institution didn’t “die” because of American goodness. It was killed, belatedly, and with horrific violence.
Hawley, it must be noted, in 2020 opposed efforts to rename American military bases named after Confederate leaders.
Similarly, Hawley offers a too-simple tale of the role of faith in the end of slavery.
Yes, the abolitionist movement was powered by Quakers and other Christians who saw the rape, murder, family separation and enforced labor of slavery as incompatible with their faith. “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ,” Frederick Douglass wrote. “I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.”
But enslavers also justified Black bondage using their religious faith. Both the North and South “read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other,” President Abraham Lincoln observed in his second inaugural address.
Hawley, who was an honors history major at Stanford University, surely knows all of this.
The senator wasn’t just factually wrong, though. He was offensive.
Juneteenth marks a day of redemption from all that terrible history. It celebrates a moment when America started (haltingly, slowly and still incompletely) to make good on the promise of liberty for all of its people, not just a privileged few. It’s a day that deserves to be observed with joy, but also a dose of humility.
The senator could have celebrated that accomplishment with millions of other Americans, including many of his own constituents. Instead, he had to make it about his thing — a chance to own the libs.
What a sad and ugly display of leadership. Josh Hawley knows better. Missourians deserve better. And Juneteenth deserves to be celebrated in its own right, not as provocation from a too-online politician.
