Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution

On December 18, 1865 the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution was declared to have been ratified by 27 out of then 36 states. This was the famous Amendment prohibiting involuntary servitude in the US:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Gone with the wind...

Similar to "War and Peace" by Sergei Bondarchuk as the best historic movie in Russia, the "Gone with the Wind" is the best historic movie made in America. In fact, it was on this day, on December 15, 1939 in Atlanta that we had its first premier. Based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) who won the Pulitzer prize for it, it was the first color movie to win the Oscar. Margaret Mitchell had some biographical inspiration behind the love story of Scarlett and Rhett. She was in love with her college classmate, but was deprived of happiness when he died in WWI.

The making of this movie cost $3.7 million of dollars (which would be $41 million today). The movie theater was decorated as the Mansion of O'Hara with the picture of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. Is there any more romantic and sad love story than that? There is a fine line between hatred and passionate love... Unless taken care of and cherished daily, love dies like a flower and bringing it back is almost impossible... True love can survive time and all obstacles if only it is fired by constant reciprocal passion...

Is there also a better dramatization of the US Civil War than that? Perhaps, it was the strongest anti-war movie ever made. Of course, the cataclysmic moment in the movie is when Scarlett O'Hara shouts in the barren field 'I'll never be hungry again!' Some argue that it is a racist movie because it portrays the slaves as intellectually deprived and silly. I do not like some of the scenes in the movie that assume that. Insofar as the book/movie tends to romanticize the South with its moral depravity and regressiveness inherent in anti-abolition and white supremacism (KKK), it has its shortcomings. But remember, this was still the early 1900s. Abolition aside, white supremacy was pervasive in all of the United States, not only in the South, up through the 60s and the Civil Rights Era. In addition, the anti-war sentiments are always attacked as insensitive to the race issue, since the War ultimately freed the slaves.

It is really one of the best movies on women's emancipation. Scarlett is the epitome of a strong woman, who is capable of surviving-- her utmost instinct-- by overcoming many of the customs of the Deep South. A Southern belle, who is not expected to do anything else but to marry and bear and educate children, transforms into a businesswoman, a powerful woman who can in fact define her own destiny. Then she also sexually awakens and comes to a realization of her body's wishes. There are many interesting transformations that occur with her that show that she is still in the 'process' of changing... Of course, she is far from perfect and not the role model for today's women. But 19th century women began many of the inner transformations that were continued by women through the 20th. Interestingly, Scarlett is hated by most in the society. That is the fate of strong and extraordinary women of all times!

I am never tired of watching this movie...

Fighting for the Cause...

In June of 1863 the battle of Gettysburg was to decide the fate of the US Civil War. Michael Shaara's book "The Killer Angels" is perhaps the best ever written about this historic battle. An excerpt with Colonel Chamberlain of the Union Army is bound to be copied here:

He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually all over the earth... The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himslf. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner... the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.
Yet the words had been used too often and the fragments that came to Chamberlain now were weak. A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals?

War is a war, because whether it is for a good cause or not, men are murdered in it. War is a mass murder which culminates in the humanity soaked in the bloodbath of its own creation... War can only be justified when it is for critical self-defense, when one's country is in grave and immediate danger... Even then self-defense must be proportionate to the attack...

The US Civil War, an extraordinary war, was fought for a good cause, a noble cause... But still it was a war between brothers and sisters, many of whom did not want to fight or die... It is hard to say that it was fought in vain, because when people die on the battlefield believing in the ideals of that war, they must be honored by recognition that they did not die in vain... We are indebted to them for their sacrifice, their courage and their faith in the cause...

But war is a war... Slavery in the US could have its natural demise without bloodshed. A free society could not endure bondage and servitude for long. Many in the South realized that even then and many generals fighting in the Confederacy did not own slaves, including Robert E. Lee.

Moreover, the slaves were freed only nominally, because servitude was replaced with complete poverty and discrimination... Even the black soldiers fighting on the side of the Union were being discriminated and were sent to accomplish impossible missions (see the movie Glory). So, discimination and segregation culminating in the shameful doctrine enunciated in Plessy v. Ferguson-- 'separate but equal'-- was to replace the slavery.

With or without the US Civil War, it took a hundred years to really end the 'slavery' of the African-Americans... It was not until the Civil Rights Movement and the Warren Court that freedom became real...

Revolutions and wars fought for sacred ideals demean those ideals once blood of a human being is shed... These are conflagrations that destroy societies, homes and whole civilizations... Their powerful wind disperses seeds of destruction-- falling on earth and burning without giving fruits, and take a long time to calm down and settle... People, gone with the wind-- they are...

The United States Constitution

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

On this day, September 17, 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention the Founding Fathers proclaimed and adopted the U.S. Constitution. A historic day, when on the principles of French liberal ideals the U.S. officially proclaimed its Constitution and set forth on its journey into the future... A noble document, the U.S. Constitution was well-thought out, albeit was a product of some compromises in order to incentivize the states to ratify it.

As the time revealed, the American experiment worked pretty well because the checks and balances and federalism gave flexibility and freedom, as well as structure and a strong rule of law. But there was always struggle between the federal government and states who tried to relieve themselves of many 'chains' imposed by the Union. Thence, the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). Even to this day, the states often try to disengage themselves from the federal government and there is much litigation over issues of preemption. Many people still try to go back to the intent of the Founding Fathers in creating the US Constitution, which is often not illuminating because times have changed. The Founding Fathers could never have predicted all the scenarios.

Moreover, with globalization and internationalization, the US as a world leader, must enforce the Constitution in such a way that it does not result in abdridgement of international obligations... In 1787 the world was very different and the role of the US also.

But the model has worked and is successful if only we guard vigilantly the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights...

The Dream...

On September 22, 1862 in the heat of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (here):

That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

The freedom granted by the victory of the Union remained nominal when segregation and discrimination took the place of the servitude... It was only a hundred years later when Dr. King came to awaken the American conscience to enforce the true meaning of freedom... On August 28, 1963 he proclaimed the second 'Emancipation Proclamation'-- 'I have a Dream' speech, thereby denouncing any efforts to preserve the status quo and barricade the Civil Rights movement energized by him and his followers...
Today it is crucial to examine whether America has preserved the image that these noble men worked hard to create...