JD Vance, Birthright Citizenship, and Civil War Memory

(Source: Latin Times)

History is vitally important to the Trump administration, specifically how it is taught in the classroom and at historical sites and how it is remembered by the nation as a whole. This has been the case for practically every administration, but it is hard to remember a time when we’ve seen such a direct and concerted attempt to shape a historical narrative for public consumption and for the sole purpose of reinforcing a political ideology.

We’ve seen it through the intimidation and downsizing of the National Park Service, the gutting of the National Endowment for the Humanities, threats against the Smithsonian, and firings at the National Archives, to name just a few.

This war on history is part of a larger project to redefine what it means to be an American citizen by returning us to a point where white people dominated the polity. You can see this clearly in a recent speech delivered by Vice President JD Vance to the Claremont Institute in California, which many people see as the “nerve center” of MAGA.

Vance offered one of the clearest articulations to date of American citizenship and identity based on ancestry and bloodline rather than the principles outlined in our Declaration of Independence, all in an effort to promote the administration’s immigration agenda and its continued attempt to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment and Birthright Citizenship

What Vance expressed to the friendly Claremont audience was a dramatically reduced vision of American citizenship. It’s one in which having ancestors who have lived here for generations entitles you to more; a vision of citizenship that’s long existed around the world, with a notable and aspirational exception in the United States.

“Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence — that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time,” Vance said.

He explained that such a definition “would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it “the logic of America as a purely creedal nation.”

Of course, the problem with this interpretation of American identity and citizenship, according to Vance, is that it makes no provision for a view of this country as based on bloodline, ancestry, and race.

By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship “purely as an idea” would “reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,” he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups.

“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong,” he concluded.

As part of his attack on New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the vice president asked: “I wonder, has he ever read the letters from boy soldiers in the Union Army to parents and sweethearts that they’d never see again?”

It’s a shocking view if you place any weight on the Declaration of Independence and the principles of equality in defining what it means to be an American. Agreeing with these founding principles isn’t enough and being born here isn’t enough, according to Vance. Ultimately, if the administration has its way, they won’t matter at all.

You can see why the Trump administration has taken such drastic steps to shape history education and public history over the past few months, specifically in its marginalization of African American history and the history of minorities more generally. These stories directly challenge their ideological and political agenda.

But if ancestry to the Civil War era is a precondition of citizenship, where does that leave President Trump? Where does it leave Vance’s own wife? Clearly, these are not very smart people.

Notice that Vance makes no distinction between whether your ancestor fought for the United States or the Confederacy. He doesn’t care. What matters is that they were white and that they were here.

This would be the perfect time for the Confederate heritage community to trot out their stories about Black Confederates and their view of the Confederacy as a multi-racial/cultural experiment. Don’t hold your breadth, folks.

Vance also doesn’t want you to remember the roughly 200,000 African Americans who fought for the United States during the Civil War. Just under 80 percent of free born African American men of military age in northern states volunteered to fight for the United States during the Civil War.

In ignoring these men, Vance appears to believe that white men, who fought to destroy the United States and create an independent slaveholding republic, are more worthy of inclusion.

These men volunteered to fight for a nation, whose own supreme court had ruled just a few years before the start of the Civil War, that African Americans could never be citizens under our Constitution. Many of them were willing to give their lives, not just to save the Union and end slavery, but to see this nation transformed into something more inclusive and in line with its founding credo.

This emancipationist narrative is now the dominant memory of the Civil War, which is why the Trump administration has expended so much energy pushing back against it. Distorting or minimizing the heroism of these men and the broader story of slavery helps to sever its connection from the postwar debates that led to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and its provision for Birthright Citizenship.

Let’s close by looking at one of those Civil War letters that JD Vance lectured Mr. Mamdani to read. My guess is that Vance did not imagine the following letter, written by James Gooding of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts calling on Lincoln to institute equal pay for Black soldiers.

Morris Island, S.C.

September 28, 1863

Your Excellency, Abraham Lincoln:

Your Excellency will pardon the presumption of an humble individual like myself, in addressing you, but the earnest solicitation of my comrades in arms besides the genuine interest felt by myself in the matter is my excuse, for placing before the Executive head of the Nation our Common Grievance.

On the 6th of the last Month, the Paymaster of the Department informed us, that if we would decide to receive the sum of $10 (ten dollars) per month, he would come and pay us that sum, but that, on the sitting of Congress, the Regt. [regiment] would, in his opinion, be allowed the other 3 (three). He did not give us any guarantee that this would be, as he hoped; certainly he had no authority for making any such guarantee, and we cannot suppose him acting in any way interested.

Now the main question is, are we Soldiers, or are we Laborers? We are fully armed, and equipped, have done all the various duties pertaining to a Soldier’s life, have conducted ourselves to the complete satisfaction of General Officers, who were, if anything, prejudiced against us, but who now accord us all the encouragement and honors due us; have shared the perils and labor of reducing the first stronghold that flaunted a Traitor Flag; and more, Mr. President, today the Anglo Saxon Mother, Wife, or Sister are not alone in tears for departed Sons, Husbands, and Brothers. The patient, trusting descendant of Africa’s Clime have dyed the ground with blood, in defence of the Union, and Democracy. Men, too, your Excellency, who know in a measure the cruelties of the iron heel of oppression, which in years gone by, the very power their blood is now being spilled to maintain, ever ground them in the dust.

But when the war trumpet sounded o’er the land, when men knew not the Friend from the Traitor, the black man laid his life at the altar of the Nation, and he was refused. When the arms of the Union were beaten, in the first year of the war, and the Executive called for more food for its ravenous maw, again the black man begged the privilege of aiding his country in her need, to be again refused.

And now he is in the War, and how has he conducted himself? Let their dusky forms rise up, out of the mires of James Island, and give the answer. Let the rich mould around Wagner’s parapet be upturned, and there will be found an eloquent answer. Obedient and patient and solid as a wall are they. All we lack is a paler hue and a better acquaintance with the alphabet.

Now your Excellency, we have done a Soldier’s duty. Why can’t we have a Soldier’s pay? You caution the Rebel chieftain, that the United States knows no distinction in her soldiers. She insists on having all her soldiers of whatever creed or color, to be treated according to the usages of War. Now if the United States exacts uniformity of treatment of her soldiers from the insurgents, would it not be well and consistent to set the example herself by paying all her soldiers alike?

We of this Regt. were not enlisted under any “contraband” act. But we do not wish to be understood as rating our service of more value to the Government than the service of the ex-slave. Their service is undoubtedly worth much to the Nation, but Congress made express provision touching their case, as slaves freed by military necessity, and assuming the Government to be their temporary Guardian. Not so with us. Freemen by birth and consequently having the advantage of thinking and acting for ourselves so far as the Laws would allow us, we do not consider ourselves fit subjects for the Contraband act.

We appeal to you, Sir, as the Executive of the Nation, to have us justly dealt with. The Regt. do pray that they be assured their service will be fairly appreciated by paying them as American Soldiers, not as menial hirelings. Black men, you may well know, are poor; three dollars per month, for a year, will supply their needy wives and little ones with fuel. If you, as Chief Magistrate of the Nation, will assure us of our whole pay, we are content. Our Patriotism, our enthusiasm will have a new impetus, to exert our energy more and more to aid our Country. Not that our hearts ever flagged in devotion, spite the evident apathy displayed in our behalf, but we feel as though our country spurned us, now we are sworn to serve her. Please give this a moment’s attention.

The vice president may not want to remember or honor the military service and sacrifice of Gooding because he doesn’t fit into his ethnonationalist agenda, but the rest of us have an obligation to stand up and fight for this history.

More importantly, we have an obligation to fight for a nation that Gooding and countless others helped to create.