Weible: Lessons for 2011, from 1861 & 1961

Robert Weible, a native of Seaford, is the state historian of New York.

As New York's state historian, I often say that New Yorkers have provided the country with some of its most informed leadership. Why? Because they understand their state's place in American history. Take the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War, observed from 1961-65.

The Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum and some Americans were using their heritage to defy federal desegregation efforts. New York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, however, used history to promote racial equality: He joined with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in celebration of the 100th birthday of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a draft of which is owned by the New York State Library. Rockefeller knew that anniversaries were as much about the present and future as they were the past.

Earlier this year, Americans began celebrating another Civil War anniversary: its 150th. The draft Emancipation Proclamation will be available to the public as part of a major Civil War exhibition at the New York State Museum in Albany next September.

Our antebellum ancestors -- like Americans today -- were anything but unified: at odds over race, equality, religion, immigration, jobs and the proper role of government. Before the Civil War, some in upstate New York were uncompromising abolitionists caught up in the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening.

They constituted only a small percentage of the state's population, however, and with African-Americans making up less than 2 percent of the state, most New Yorkers were indifferent or resistant to the notion of racial equality. There were more instances of open hostility toward Catholic immigrants at that time. Nevertheless, they supported the principle of a free labor force, especially in the territories -- where they favored government-supported homesteading and railroad development.

Many downstate New Yorkers did business with aristocratic plantation owners, meanwhile, and saw no reason to oppose slavery. Urban immigrants believed that emancipation would threaten their jobs and neighborhoods. And as war threatened to break out, New York City's mayor even proposed that the city secede from the United States and become a free port.

After the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, however, New York supported the Union cause with more men, money and matériel than any other state. As demonstrated in Gary Gallagher's book, "The Union War," a majority of New Yorkers believed in the founding fathers' vision of a united government "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Americans today often take their form of government for granted, but this was by no means the case in the mid-19th century. By 1850, democratic revolutions in Europe had ended badly, and New Yorkers and their fellow Unionists were alarmed that slave-owning oligarchs might destroy the world's only remaining democracy. They understood exactly what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope on earth."

But Union supporters did more than defend their government. They liberated 4 million people from bondage.

The Civil War may be long over, but Americans are still divided over many of the same issues that brought them to blows 150 years ago: federal vs. state authority, race relations, the meaning of American freedom, and the country's place in the world. "The past is never dead," as William Faulkner once famously wrote. "It's not even past." Certainly, that was the case in Faulkner's South. Even today, there are some who righteously justify secession and slavery and refer to the "War of Northern Aggression."

But New Yorkers know better. Like Rockefeller, they understand that the state's historical documents and artifacts tell a different story than that portrayed in films such as "Gone with the Wind" and "Birth of a Nation."

So as the Civil War anniversary unfolds, it's important to understand that historical memories do indeed help shape the nation's future. New Yorkers can find facts and uncover truths at libraries, archives, and museums all over the state.