MLK & Immigration JAN 19-20, 2009
January 19, 2009 - January 20, 2009
Celebrating the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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See Tide of Immigration Take Way to Tennessee
The 106th General Assembly is in recess for three weeks so we look back 140 Years to a time when Tennessee and Nashville were "interested in seeing the tide of immigration take its way to Tennessee."
One hundred years before the Tet Offensive dashed President Lyndon Baines Johnson's 1968 hopes for reelection and the tragic assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, Tennessee was faced with terrible economic forecasts brought on in part by devastating property devaluations.
The Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) falls under the control of one of Tennessee's Constitutional Officers, the Secretary of State. One of TSLA's functions is keeping and preserving the records of the General Assembly. Past deeds, as well as misdeeds, of the Legislature are freely available to the public due to the sworn diligence of past Secretaries of State.
Another of Tennessee's Constitutional Officers, the Comptroller of the Treasury, has been charged with submitting reports regarding property and the tax base.
In the early days of the Civil War, the Comptroller's Report of October 1861 showed the beginning of a trend signaling a decline which led to the eventual end of slavery, the *peculiar institution in which some human beings were listed as property and were taxed as such and other human beings paid the taxes for owning them to an institution known as government.
Contrary to common folklore of today, every county in Tennessee once had slaves. Thus, every county once had slave owners. Capital was invested in the ownership of slaves in order to provide and secure a reliable source of labor. Largely this was to work agricultural lands but slavery was literally the backbone of Southern commerce and industry, trades and crafts, and touched a thousand points of a very vibrant business life. Enslaved laborers greased the gears of transportation, were blacksmiths to make horseshoes, were ferriers to shoe horses, were porters to carry the load, were metallurgists, artisans, artists, &c.
Between 1860 and 1861, land and slave values both began a downhill slide. State and local governments were just beginning to face a very serious revenue shortfall of crisis proportions while amassing staggering debt obligations.
Per the Comptroller's Report, in 1860 the average value of slaves in Tennessee was $886.40 which dropped to $769.36 in 1861. The average value of land per acre dropped from $8.03 to $7.35 in the same period.
Taxable Property and Polls for 1860 and 1861 show the number of slaves in Tennessee increased from 130,425 to 131,567 with the total value of these now high-risk investments dropping from $115,609,554 to $101,222,581. Land values statewide dropped from $209,297,530 to $193,293,178.
All three grand divisions showed an increase in the number of slaves but a drop in total values. The number and valuation of slaves in the 30 listed counties of East Tennessee increased from 12,679 slaves valued at $10,558,652 to 13,110 valued at $10,028,378. Middle Tennessee's 35 counties show an increase from 67,992 slaves worth $57,077,960 to 68,058 worth $46,790,145. West Tennessee's 19 counties show an increase from 49,754 slaves worth $47,972,942 to 50,399 worth $44,404,058.
As men were marched off to war, Middle and West Tennessee were hit hard with drops in land valuations from 1860 to 1861, Middle Tennessee dropping from $102,308,070 to $92,017,568 and West Tennessee from $60,843,764 to $54,954,798. In contrast, mountainous East Tennessee with its poorer agricultural land base actually showed a gain in its land valuation from $46,145,696 to $46,320,812.
Note that, in 1861, Jefferson County joined the ranks of Knox County as the only East Tennessee counties with over 1,000 slaves each.
What to do?
Crisis Action Teams
The Acts of the State of Tennessee passed at the First Session of the Thirty-Fifth General Assembly for the years 1867-68 is available in the holdings of the State Library and Archives. They provide some insight into the solution then sought by city and state, by governor and legislature, by citizens and civic leaders.
The key to the future and economic growth was immigration.
[House] Resolution 15 raising a Special Committee on Immigration was adopted October 11, 1867.
[Senate] Resolution 45 raised and added a Standing Committee on Immigration on November 7, 1967. It is signed by Speaker of the Senate D.W.C. Senter who would later become Governor. [House] Resolution 46 follows suit the same day.
Doing whatever it takes
Should the State of Tennessee consider distributing government-bought books in German to attract immigrants from the Pennsylvania D(e)ut(s)ch and Germany?
Five days after the formation of the new standing committees, [House Joint] Resolution 56 is signed by the House Speaker and Senate Speaker Senter to purchase 1,000 books in English and 1,000 books in German to distribute to German-speaking people in the North and Germany so they could learn about Tennessee from Rev. Herman Bokum's Book on the Resources of Tennessee.
Resolution 56 states: "WHEREAS, the Rev. Herman Bokum has prepared a work on the resources of Tennessee, with special reference to immigration. The object of the work is to introduce into the State, capital and labor. The work comprises about one hundred and twenty-five pages, and is to be sold for fifty cents--the manuscript is ready for inspection. It has been partly examined by His Excellency, the Governor [Parson Brownlow], and is warmly recommended by him. The work comes to the aid of every measure bearing on the internal improvements of the State, and touches the interest of every county. Mr. Bokum has been, for many years, intimately connected with the capitalists of the North, especially those of Philadelphia; and as a prominent minister of the German Reformed Church, his influence extends to the substantial Germans in Pennsylvania and in Germany. He has obtained one thousand subscribers for his work. It is proposed that the Legislature buy of the first edition one thousand copies in English, and one thousand in German, for the distribution in the North and in Germany. This has been done by the Legislatures of all the North-Western States; Therefore,
Resolved by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That two thousand copies of the first edition of Rev. Herman Bokum's work on the resources of Tennessee, be bought--one thousand in English, and one thousand in German--for free distribution in the North, and in Germany, after distributing one copy in English to each of the members of the General Assembly, and its officers.
F.S. RICHARDS
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
D.W.C. SENTER
Speaker of the Senate.
Adopted November 12, 1867.
NASHVILLE jumps into action
Racist, yes, but not xenophobic
Less than two weeks later, on November 25, 1867, the House Speaker and Senate Speaker Senter sign a Private Act, Chapter 21 which is AN ACT Incorporating the German Association of the City of Nashville, for the purpose of Encouraging and Protecting Immigration to Tennessee.
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That Adolph Nelson, C.C. Giers, Henry Metz, John Ruhm, Charles Nelson, R. Wietz, Christian King, R. Knaffle, G.W. Goettinger, and their associates and successors, be, and they are hereby, constituted a body politic and corporate, under the name and style of "The German Association of the City of Nashville, for the purpose of Encouraging and Protecting Immigration to Tennessee;" and by that name they shall...accept donations and contributions from parties interested in seeing the tide of immigration take its way to Tennessee...for the term of ninety-nine years, and shall have succession.
...
SEC. 3. Be it further enacted, That the object of said Association shall be to aid Immigrants in obtaining employment, facilitating their travel, in protecting them against fraud, and generally to grant them such aid as is necessary, and which is within the province and the means of Association; all which to be done under the constitution, by-laws, rules and regulations of the Association.
SEC. 4. Be it further enacted, That the Association is hereby authorized to procure laborers for parties applying to them; to act as agents for land owners desirous of selling their property, and for parties wishing to buy lands in the State of Tennessee...
SEC. 7. Be it further enacted, That in all cities and counties of the State of Tennessee, Branch Associations may be established under this charter, and under the auspices of the above Association....
Senate Speaker Senter would become governor from 1869 to 1871. Immigration would become a hallmark of his administration. The enabling legislation would, kowtowing to the times, explicitly exclude Chinese, yellow peril being the orders of the day.
Governor Senter's papers are held in the TSLA Archives. A summary of his reprocessed papers from 2004 is available online which states in part:
"A desire to eliminate the state debt propelled an interest in immigration. Governor Senter acknowledged that the revenues of the state were derived from taxation of property. The decade 1860-1870 saw a huge decrease in both land and personal property values. Fostered by the belief that population is wealth, foreign immigration was encouraged with the hope that acres of farm land would be converted to thriving industrial villages manned by skilled European mechanics. Several letters attest to the interest in immigration. Colonel A. C. Colyar, a longtime advocate of immigration, accepted a commission by letter as a delegate to the immigration convention at Indianapolis in November 1870. His immigration program was implemented by the organization of the Tennessee Immigration and Labor Association in February 1871."
The Nation and Nashville Today
Tuesday this nation undid significant injustices in its past as the mixed race grandson of a Kenyan goatherder was sworn in as our new President. One small step forward for our nation.
Later this week, Nashville appears on the brink of throwing the Welcome mat for immigrants into the landfill as it conducts a referendum aimed at cutting off the flow of non-English speaking immigrants whose skin is not quite as white as some might like but is no darker than that of President Barack H. Obama's. One giant leap backwards for Nashville; two giant leaps forward for bigotry and intolerance.
If we may lift from the words of a late great orator of our nation's past, we pray that Nashville voters will decide this issue not on the basis of the color of immigrants' skin but on the content of their character.
Just J
*peculiar institution
The use of the word "peculiar" in "peculiar institution" may itself be somewhat peculiar to modern English speakers. One should compare the use to one found in the Hebrew Bible. Deuteronomy 14:2 terms the children of Israel as "a peculiar people," that is, they belong to the Lord. The etymology of "peculiar" shows its derivation from the Latin word "pecus" meaning "cattle" (or chattel from the French), "pecus" being related to the English word "fee." A very closely related fellow derivative in modern English is "pecuniary" whose meaning is quite clearly related to money in legal and legislative usages. Thus, when one used the term "peculiar institution" as a politically polite term for the abomination known as slavery, the concept of property and money was always first and foremost in the thinking.
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