SOMETHING ABOUT LIBERTY

Displayed Text – we see it all around us. There are few places one can go to avoid seeing some form of writing placed on some form of surface. These are usually positive or negative performatives….No Parking…Entrance…. Exit…Private Keep Out…Trespassers will be prosecuted…Buy this… Cash Desk Pay Here....Property of Local Authority…Diplomats Only…Drink …Toilet…and so on.

It has been recorded that on the 21^st October 1774 the first display of the word LIBERTY on a flag, was one raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts in defiance of British rule in Colonial America.

Once the colonists had become Americans, the sentiment raised aloft by those budding New England revolutionaries turned it into what became Manifest Destiny, the spread across the continent, to create a nation. On the 21^st October 1867 that destiny manifested itself in the Medicine Lodge Treaty signed near Medicine Lodge, Kansas. [Note: A further a look at the writing of political agreements] The Medicine Lodge Treaty is the overall name for three treaties signed between the United States Government and southern Plains Indian tribes in October 1867, intended to bring peace to the area by relocating the Native Americans to reservations in Indian Territory and away from European-American settlement. The treaty was negotiated after investigation by the Indian Peace Commission, which in its final report in 1868 concluded that the wars had been preventable. They determined that the U.S. government and its representatives, including the United States Congress, had contributed to the warfare on the Great Plains by failing to fulfill their legal obligations and to treat the Native Americans with honesty.

(Some of the signatories of the Treaties)

Lone Wolf

The U.S. government and tribal chiefs met at a place traditional for Native American ceremonies, at their request. The first treaty was signed on the 21^st October, 1867, with the Kiowa and Comanche. The second, with the Kiowa-Apache, was signed the same day. The third treaty was signed with the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho on the 28^th October. Under the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the tribes were assigned reservations of diminished size compared to territories defined in an 1865 treaty. The treaty tribes never ratified the treaty by vote of adult males, as it required. In addition, by changing the allotment policy and authorizing sales, the Congress effectively further reduced their reservation territory. The Kiowa chief Lone Wolf filed suit against the government for fraud on behalf of the tribes in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock. In 1903 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the tribes, determining that the Congress had “plenary power” and the political right to make such decisions. In the aftermath of that case, Congress acted unilaterally on land decisions related to other reservations as well.

A plenary power or plenary authority is the separate identification, definition, and complete vesting of a power or powers or authority in a governing body or individual, to choose to act (or not to act) on a particular subject matter or area.

It is so comforting to know United States Supreme Court Justices of 1868 believed that liberty could manifest itself in plenary authority - So much for checks and balances.

Warren G.  Harding

But racism was not just directed at the Native American. The country, in particular the southern section, was rife with it. Lynch law, a type of white southern plenary power, was well established. I discover that President Warren G. Harding, a president who appears almost continually on the list of worst U.S. Presidents, delivered the first speech by a sitting President against lynching in the deep south. He delivered the speech on the 21^st October 1921 to a segregated audience at Woodrow Wilson Park in Birmingham, Alabama on the occasion of the city’s 50^th anniversary.

“Let the black man vote when he is fit to vote; prohibit the white man voting when he is unfit to vote.”

“The black man should seek to be, and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and not the best possible imitation of a white man”

Quite something to say to an audience of Southern whites in Birmingham, Alabama in 1921. If not a brilliant President, at least Harding understood something about LIBERTY.