Slavery, History, and the District Of Columbia

The Millenarianism of our Ruling Class

By any standard that means anything, Alexandria Occasio-Cortez is one of our rulers. She votes on legislation, federal spending, and gets to grill federal agents in hearings. What she says, for better or for worse, matters.

Today, she said this:

It’s a wonderful example of the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, in that unpacking all of its misleading half-truths requires an essay. But it’s also an opportunity to have plain and clear discussion of what our politics are, now, in 2019.

First, let’s discuss the fact it claims, it’s major premise, if you will.

DC was the first territory in the United States to free the enslaved.

It didn’t take long for people to point out that many states banned slavery before DC did. Occasio-Cortez’ home state of New York, for example, freed the last slaves within its environs on July 4th, 1827. For reference, historians claim there were 19,000 slaves in New York in 1770 (more than there were, at that date, in Georgia). I would say this qualifies as a U.S. territory “freeing enslaved persons”.

And New York was late to the game:

Keep in mind that the Old Northwest was a federal territory from 1787 to 1803 when the states of Ohio and the Indiana territory came into being. So here we have the United States Government (under the Articles of Confederation) banning slavery.

But the goal-posts are mobile:

This is hair-splitting, but that’s hardly the worst thing about it. The suggestion that the District of Columbia somehow led the nation in emancipation, when at the time of the Compensated Emancipation Act, 19 of the 34 states of the Union had banned slavery, in many instances setting slaves free to do so, is a repellent bastardization of the facts. Which brings us to Occasio-Cortez’ second premise:

It’s where Black Americans fled the tyranny of slavery & towards greater freedom, to DC.

{Sidebar: I realize this is a tweet, but that sentence is screaming for a red pen. The parallelism she’s attempting would require “fled away from the tyranny of slavery and towards the greatness of freedom.” The “to DC” is fine, I guess, but stylistically clunky. }

Have you ever heard the phrase “nonsense on stilts”? This denotes an expression glaringly wrong yet parading itself. This sentence is nonsense on stilts. D.C. was not a haven for runaway slaves. D.C. had a slave market until 1846, when the market at Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia. Most of the Underground Railroad functioned in the Midwest (the former Old Northwest), ferrying escaped slaves to Canada. There did exist a route running from DC to Baltimore, but comparatively speaking it was minor. Statistically speaking, the Ohio River meant freedom, not the Potomac.

Yet perhaps I am the one splitting hairs, insisting pedantically on accuracy and fullness of history. The federal government set slaves free in DC before it did anywhere else. That is not an inaccurate statement.

But even if it were a self-evident axiom, and not a technically-accurate but grossly misleading characterization of the past, what has it to do with DC statehood? How do these shoddy premises lead to this conclusion?

Yet today it’s where 2nd class citizenship reigns, and the right to vote is denied. It’s time to recognize DC statehood.

The abolition of slavery has nothing to do with DC statehood. They are connected in no way. The District of Columbia exists as a singularity under American law. DC is a city, it is not a state. It was never intended to be a state. It should not be a state.

Why not?

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

That’s an enumerate power of Congress in the Constitution of the United States (Article 1, Section 8). The national capital belongs to Congress specifically.

Why?

Because the national capital is to belong to the nation as a whole, to be ruled over by the representatives of the states and the people. It is not, and ought not be, a political entity in its own right. We are speaking of the national capital. The national capital does not need more power over national legislation. The people who work there exercise power over the nation, by definition.

In The Federalist №43, Alexander Hamilton explained the necessity of this federal district:

Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings be interrupted, with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general Government, on the State comprehending the seat of the Government for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the Government, and dissatisfactory to the other members of the confederacy.

If DC becomes the State of New Columbia, then the State of New Columbia becomes the most powerful state in the Union, its intimacy with our rulers ensuring it the first place at the table. DC would need a state government, including a governor (it did have a territorial governor, during the Grant administration, who bankrupted the territorial government and was fired within three years). Would the members of Congress get to vote for the DC government? Would they not be subject to that governor’s authority?

By the same token, would we have at least three members of Congress elected by … members of Congress? DC is an anomaly designed to escape these federal-state confusions.

I don’t know if Alexandra Occasio-Cortez knows this. I don’t know if she cares. I don’t suppose American history, or how the American politcal compact functions, is something she gives much thought to. Like many of her ideology and age, she wants to bulldoze everything standing between her and the utopia she has been trained to believe requires only her will to come into being. DC residents don’t get representation in Congress, and this is bad because not fair, and therefore no different than whipping chattel to grow tobacco. What those old white dudes wanted in the 18th century doesn’t matter, because they were old and white and dudes and they owned slaves. That’s all we know about them, and all we need to. 1619, you guys. 1619.

So the suspicion remains that DC statehood is about nothing so much as enlarging the power of the place where the powerful dwell. Occasio-Cortez may be from New York, but she seems most at home in District 1.

If taxing residents of DC without granting them representation in Congress is so very objectionable (which is not an unreasonable proposition), then we can solve this by giving DC’s elected Delegate-at-large a vote on the floor. This would preserve DC’s special status and alleviate the lack of representation. It’s a simple solution, a compromise, and it could clear the constitutional hurdle without too much difficulty. One delegate isn’t enough? Make it two, even three, to be equal to their Electoral College votes and compensate for the lack of Senators.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska proposed this very solution in 2009. It has died in committee. Does AOC know this? Does she care? Is anything less than full-throated statehood even acceptable?

More to the point, is there any interest in this kind of compromise in our ruling class anymore? Can Pelosi and McConnell make a deal on anything besides budgetary matters? Has our thinking become too millenarian to allow competing goods to co-exist? Does everything have to be framed in terms of breaking shackles, so as to deny opposing viewpoints legitimacy? Do we want to fix taxation-without-representation, or do we just want to utterly unmake the American political compact, that we may create whatever we want?

I should be able to answer all of those questions easily. But I cannot.