Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party (26 page)

Uncomfortably, however, this family history suggests that Sally Hemings was actually related to Martha Jefferson. Jefferson bore multiple children with a slave woman who was actually half-sister to his wife. Martha Jefferson may have known about her father siring children with the slaves but there is no evidence that she knew about her husband’s relationship with Sally.
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In this respect, Martha Jefferson was definitely not an enabler.

The southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of South Carolina Senator James Chesnut, was also familiar with what went on at the plantation. Her husband was not one of the guilty parties, but apparently his father James Chesnut Sr. was. “The Colonel,” as he was called, apparently sired several light-skinned mulattoes and while everyone else pretended not to notice, his daughter-in-law certainly did.

Chesnut writes that this aspect of plantation life, more than anything else, made her hate slavery. “You say there are no more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But what do you say to this—to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem, with its consequences, under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters?

“He holds his head high and poses as a model of all human virtues to these poor women whom God and the laws have given him. From the heights of awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don Juan. ‘You with that immoral book’ he would say, and then he would order her out of his sight.

“The wife and daughters in their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter. They profess to adore the father as the model of all saintly goodness.”

In an earlier chapter I quoted Democratic Senator James Hammond of South Carolina rhapsodizing the virtues of slavery. But Hammond seems to have left out some of slavery’s benefits, at least as far as he was concerned. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust notes that Hammond seems to have fathered children by two slave women on his plantation. In a letter to his white son Harry, Hammond confessed his probable paternity, asking Harry to care for these women and their offspring after his own death.

“In the last will I made,” he writes, “I left you Sally Johnson, the mother of Louisa, and all the children of both. Sally says Henderson is my child. It is possible, but I do not believe it. Yet act on her’s rather than my opinion. Louisa’s first child may be mine. Her second I believe is mine. Take care of her and her children who are both of your blood. Do not let Louisa or any of my children or possible children be the slaves of strangers.”
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So Hammond’s two slave concubines are mother and daughter. The daughter was reportedly twelve when Hammond first impregnated her. By the standards of Democrats, Hammond was a considerate fellow; while he didn’t want to free his concubines or his children, he did want to keep them enslaved “within the family.” I can see Bill Clinton, if he lived at the time, acting the same way and feeling mighty proud of himself for doing so.

Another valuable source on our topic is the abolitionist Republican Frederick Douglass. Douglass recalled during his slave days how masters often produced children with slave women. “This arrangement,” he wrote, “admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders and their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin the additional attraction of profit.”

Douglass added, “One might imagine that the children of such connections would fare better in the hands of their masters than other slaves. The rule is quite the other way. A man who will enslave his own blood may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins and the mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child.

“What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence. Women—white women I mean—are idols in the south, not wives, for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these idols but nod or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their slaves out of deference to the feelings of their white wives.”

DEFILERS OF WOMEN

Several themes of consequence emerge from the Chesnut, Hammond, and Douglass accounts. We can see the Democratic slave master as a perfect hypocrite, posing as a champion of virtue while he debases the slave women. Here I am reminded of Bill Clinton, preening as a champion of equality and social justice while he defiles women who are within his power. Apparently the man has no shame, and neither did his Democratic forbears.

From Douglass’s description we also see how ruthless the plantation owner can be. He has no qualms about selling off his own children. Here I recall Bill pressuring Gennifer Flowers to get an abortion. These are Democrats, then as now, seeking to avoid accountability and get rid of the evidence of their misdeeds. The circumstances are different, but in terms of the character of these Democrats, not much seems to have changed.

The slave owner is trying to escape what his family will think. Chesnut writes about the plantation daughters whose innocence does not include actual innocence of what their father is up to. They know what’s going on, but they pretend not to notice. We cannot say that “ignorance is bliss” because this is feigned ignorance. Feigned ignorance is not bliss—it is actually collusion.

I’m also reminded of the feminists and more broadly progressive and Democratic activists who know at bottom that Bill is a serial abuser. They know Hillary is his co-conspirator. Still, they act like nothing has been really proven. I’m sure the Democrats said some of the same things
in the 1830s. “The abolitionists and the Republicans are all lying. None of those things are true.”

Then we have the wife, who is disgraced by the husband but endures his atrocities. On the surface that’s Hillary, the longsuffering spouse. But only on the surface. When we probe deeper we see that plantation wives had to suffer their husbands’ atrocities but they didn’t enable them. They didn’t cover up for their husbands. They didn’t launch public campaigns against the slave women who were defiled.

Not that the plantation wives deserve our complete sympathy. Douglass interestingly points out that the wrath of the plantation wife, instead of being directed against the wayward husband, could sometimes be directed against the child. Douglass is not the only observer to note this; it’s a fairly common theme in slave narratives collected by abolitionists in the nineteenth century and by the Slave Narrative Project that interviewed former slaves in the early twentieth century.

In one account, the slave Moses Roper recalled, “I was born in North Carolina, in Caswell County; I am not able to tell in what month or year. What I shall now relate is what was told me by my mother and grandmother. A few months before I was born, my father married my mother’s young mistress. As soon as my father’s wife heard about my birth, she sent one of my mother’s sisters to see whether I was white or black, and when she had seen me, she returned and told her mistress that I was white and resembled Mr. Roper very much.

“Mr. Roper’s wife not being pleased with this report, she got a large club stick and knife, and went into my mother’s room with a full intention to murder me with her knife and club. But as she was going to stick the knife into me, my grandmother happening to come in, caught the knife and saved my life.”

This incident is probably not typical. Most plantation wives, of course, were not murderers. Probably Douglass’s account of women instructing that their husband’s slave offspring be beaten, punished, or sold is more typical. In any case, this is a very degraded human response: I don’t want to confront my husband, so instead I’ll take it out on the kid.

Hillary’s modus operandi of course is different. She doesn’t blame the children, because as far as we know there are no children to blame. But she does blame the women whom her husband has victimized. She hires detectives to threaten them and publicly expose them. She ridicules them, suggesting that they are low-life trash. Rather than admit her husband abused them, she claims that the women are abusing him!

It may seem that in trying to punish or sell illegitimate children, the Democratic plantation wife is far worse than Hillary, who merely sought to discredit, humiliate, and chase off Bill’s various women. But in her choice of target, Hillary’s behavior is even worse than that of the plantation wife. While the plantation wife lashes out at the child who had nothing to do with the offense, Hillary actually faults the victims of the offense.

DEFENDING A RAPIST

What is the character of a person who becomes a sexual enabler? We get an early glimpse into this question from 1975, when Hillary Clinton defended a man, Thomas Alfred Taylor, who was accused of beating and raping a twelve-year-old girl. A virgin prior to the attack, she spent five days in a coma, several months recovering from her injuries, and years in therapy.

Even people who are accused of heinous crimes deserve criminal representation. Hillary’s strategy in defending Taylor, however, was to blame the teenage victim. According to an affidavit filed by Hillary, children who come from “disorganized families such as the complainant” sometimes “exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences.” Hillary suggested the girl was “emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.”

Here Hillary seems to be echoing what Bernie Sanders wrote in his rape fantasy essay. In this case, however, the girl certainly didn’t dream up the assault and rape. There was physical evidence that showed she had been violated, and she was beaten so badly she was in a coma. Prosecutors had in their possession a bloodied pair of Taylor’s underwear.

But fortunately for Hillary and her client, the forensic lab mishandled the way that evidence was preserved. At the time of trial, the state merely had a pair of Taylor’s underwear with a hole cut in it. Hillary plea bargained on behalf of Taylor and got him released without having to do any additional time. A tape unearthed by the
Washington Free Beacon
has Hillary celebrating the outcome. “Got him off with time served in the county jail,” she says.

Did Hillary believe that, in this case, justice was done? Certainly not. On the tape, Hillary admits she never trusted her client. “Course he claimed he didn’t, and all this stuff.” So she decided to verify his story. “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed—which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.”

Clearly Hillary knows her client is guilty, and this fact doesn’t bother her. The most chilling aspect of Hillary’s voice is her indifference—even bemusement—at getting a man off after he raped a twelve-year-old. The episode is a revealing look into the soul of an enabler. In fact, it reminds me of Alinsky protesting to Frank Nitti about the wasted expense of importing an out-of-town-killer. Hillary, like Alinsky, seems to be a woman without a conscience.
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Yet this is the same Hillary who was honored in September 2013 by the Children’s Defense Fund for being a “tireless voice for children.” One begins to see here what such awards actually mean. Hillary’s actual prize should have been for the facilitation of adult abuse of women and young girls. Her rape case turned out to be excellent preparation for her lifelong advocacy of a single sex offender—Bill.

A KIND OF PIMP

The puzzle of the enabler is what would cause someone to become one. At first glance, we may be tempted to consider Hillary to be a kind of pimp, similar perhaps to the Mayflower Madam. The Mayflower Madam, Sydney Biddle Barrows, ran a prostitution agency with expensive girls and high-paying clients. She boasted that she used modern
marketing techniques to win clients and procure “talent.” But we know what she got out of the deal: money.

If Hillary were a pimp, she would be a special kind of pimp, renting out a single gigolo who happens to be her husband. Yet Bill is not a gigolo: he doesn’t charge for his services. Moreover, Hillary neither procures Bill’s sexual partners nor does she directly profit from them. So the pimp analogy, tempting though it is, doesn’t really work. We still have to figure out why Hillary has devoted her life to enabling Bill’s sex crimes and offenses.

What does it mean to be an enabler? The conventional wisdom is that enablers are indulgent people who make it possible for others to act upon their weaknesses or addictions. Think of the mother who knows her son is an alcoholic and feels sorry for him. Even though she knows that it’s bad for him to drink, she lets him, and this of course sustains his addiction and makes his condition worse.

In the psychological literature, this is known as a passive or indulgent enabler. But there is another type of enabler, one that actually creates addictions. This is the active or initiating enabler. Think of a mother who doesn’t want her son to leave home. She knows that in the ordinary course of things, he is likely to get a job, meet a woman, and move out of the house.

She knows he likes to drink, so she regularly has alcohol in the house. She encourages him to have one, and then another, and then another. Her goal is to
make
him into an alcoholic. Why? Because then she knows he cannot move out. He is unlikely to be able to find a woman and hold a job. He becomes forever dependent on her, and this is the way she wants it.

Now which type of enabler is Hillary Clinton? Again, the progressive answer is: the first kind, the indulgent enabler. In this scenario Bill is the bad guy. He has a problem, and Hillary, because she married him, has to endure that problem. So Hillary makes the best of it, trying to curb Bill’s excesses while still holding together their marriage.

In this view Hillary is the devoted wife, fiercely protective of her flawed husband. Even if she is guilty of some sort of complicity, Hillary
is, at worst, a passive enabler. “Tolerating Bill’s weakness,” says Hillary’s pal Susan Thomases, “has always been part of her relationship with him.”
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