In life, there are plenty of people, that protest and clamor for change, and of which, few of those people so protesting, are really interested in some sort of gradual process for that change. In other words, people that want change, because of a perceived injustice, or for progress, or for this or for that, want such to happen in a decisive and clear-cut manner; and, of which, one of the strategies of those trying to forestall such dramatic change, is to preach to the people so protesting that a policy of gradualism is a sufficient enough pathway for the cause – in other words, they are trying to sell what often amounts to an illusion that such change will come, but it just can’t come right here and right now.
In truth, those that are in chains, want their freedom in the immediacy; whereas, those that control those chains, typically have their reasons upon why there shouldn’t be any real hurry to change such. When it comes to America’s Civil War, we do so find that in the aftermath of such, that the Reconstruction Amendments, which are the 13th, which abolished slavery; the 14th, which gave citizenship to all those born within this nation; and the 15th, which gave people of color, the enfranchisement of the vote – could not conceivably have ever passed the House and the Senate, if the South had simply never seceded from this Union of States.
In point of fact, in 1861, there were thirty-four States, of which, nineteen of those States were free, and fifteen of those permitted slavery to exist within their State. This thus signifies, that there was zero chance that the votes so needed to pass the 13th through the 15th Amendments could have ever occurred in that particular time period, because a Constitutional Amendment, necessitated a two-thirds majority both in the Senate, as well as in the House of Representatives. However, when the South seceded, they thus failed to exist as States in good standing of that Union, and further to the point, when so defeated, they had to first petition to the government of, for, and by the people, for re-admittance to that Union, along with the salient fact that those so representing those Southern States, were initially, no longer the elite of Southern aristocracy, but in certain instances, people of color.
So then, as it has been said, opportunity favors those that are prepared – signifying that those progressive minds and politicians that had been clamoring for the abolition of slavery, would, in fact, have their day. Indeed, not only did slavery end up being abolished, but those human beings of color that had been previously adjudicated by the highest court of this land as being considered to be nothing more than property, that “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” -- found that these Amendments, thus gave those people their rights.
So too, it has to be recognized, that there so came that time when the colonists in America, decided that enough was enough, and did not themselves preach gradualism, when they so signed and declared that Declaration of Independence. So then, those that side with gradualism, are pretty much those that are happy with their lot; whereas, those that preach decisiveness, represent fair-mindedness and justice.