Just 30 miles west of Washington, DC, over 60,000 green troops representing the United States of America and the Confederate States of America faced off in the first major land battle of the Civil War in July 1861. On Wilbur McLean’s farm near Manassas, Virginia, the nascent Confederacy struck a shocking blow for a new Republic whose cornerstone lay in the following principle:
The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted.
Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy uttered these words confident in the primary of slavery over free labor, and the supremacy of the white race over the black.
Four years later that epic struggle would end in Wilbur McLean’s new home in Appomattox. The Confederate dream died in April 1865, and a new birth of freedom ushered in would gain initial favor in the heady days of Radical Reconstruction. At the forefront of the struggle were 186,000 African American troops who, more than anybody else, converted the war for Union into a war for emancipation and equal citizenship.
Sadly, that dream would be deferred 100 years as a coalition of white supremacists North and South conspired to keep the emancipationist vision in check. The grand Confederate victory in Manassas in 1861 may not have resulted in the birth of a new nation, but it most certainly reaffirmed the cornerstone laid by its Vice President.
Until now.
In the very town where 60,000 white soldiers fought over the fate of the Union – and the nature of freedom itself – more than 85,000 people gathered tonight to hear an African American give the last speech in a Presidential campaign. Tomorrow, Barack Obama may very well become the first black President. In doing so, he will not only dismantle the infamous cornerstone of the Confederate republic once headquartered in Richmond. But he will fulfill the dream launched by 186,000 black soldiers who fought to free themselves and become equal citizens in the republic.
Tomorrow we come full circle.