Have Patience, for it is Difficult to Accept Defeat

I was in New York City May 29 and 30. Imam Shamsi Ali asked me to speak at a seminar on Islam in Indonesia in the United Nations building. The Indonesian-born Grand Imam of a mosque in New York City was the architect; Desra Percaya, the Indonesian ambassador to the United Nations, was the organizer.

I set out by car from Evansville, Indiana, where I have been studying for the past three months, for a journey of more than 1000 miles. That was because I detoured south to visit places that were relevant to my study. I took turns driving with John Mohn, my teacher and a senior journalist in the U.S.

I crossed 11 states: Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I stopped by their big cities, their villages and their rural areas: Memphis, Tupelo, Birmingham, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbia, Charlotte, Greensboro, Appomattox, Durham, Richmond, Dover, Lewes, Atlantic City, Ocean City and Philadelphia. I also visited several of their universities.

At one point, I had to stop by a settlement to fill my gas tank. I saw dozens of nice houses around the gas station. “Is this a village?” I asked. “In the structure of the American government, there is no such thing as a village,” said John. “The smallest unit is town,” he added — namely, “villages” with a population of less than 2,000 people, in some cases.

But the place I stopped, Birdsnest, Virginia, turns out to be a settlement that is not bound to any form of local government administration. It is not an RT (neighborhood), not an RW (collection of neighborhoods), not a kelurahan (village), not a city. It is simply called an “unincorporated community” — that is, a settlement that is not bound to a government organization.

The residents of Birdsnest don’t want to be a part of any city. They think they don’t need to have a government organization. Neither do they have a group leader or a coordinator. They think they can take care of themselves. It is true that once there was a post office there, but it closed a long time ago. They think it is unnecessary to participate in local elections. They think they don’t need to have a representative in the state legislature, either.

As it turns out, there are many communities in the U.S. with the same status. They believe it is there that the essence of freedom and independence can be found. That is the most profound democratic philosophy that America believes in. They believe that fundamental freedom was what enabled the U.S. to become the superpower it is now.

Before that, I visited Appomattox, a “village” in rural Virginia. There I saw where General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army that fought for secession from the U.S., surrendered. After almost 70 years of being part of the U.S., almost as old as Indonesian independence today, seven states in the South — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Florida — declared their secession. The Northern states and the president of the U.S. were against it.

Four years of civil war and nearly 1 million deaths later — about 5 percent of the population at the time — the South surrendered in that village of Appomattox, to be once again part of the U.S.

From here I learned how costly it is to uphold the Constitution. And yet it must be upheld.

Another lesson that is also costly: How difficult it is to accept defeat.

Not all soldiers and Southern leaders accepted General Lee’s decision to surrender. The governor of Florida at the time, John Milton, wrote a letter to his son. He could not accept the defeat. He did not want to live under the administration of President Abraham Lincoln, who had won in the last election. After he signed the letter, Milton went straight to his gun and fired it into his own head.

A large plantation owner who was also active in politics, Edmund Ruffin, did the same thing. He fired the first shot at the Union Army that ultimately caused the war. Ruffin was shocked to receive news of General Lee’s surrender. Without hesitation, he pointed his gun into his own mouth: bang.

Moreover, 10,000 people from the South who did not want to live under Lincoln’s administration chose to leave America. Like a great wave, they moved to the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and other countries.

Not everyone who remained in America could accept the defeat, either. They formed groups to make their own way. Many organizations were founded on that sentiment, including the Ku Klux Klan.

Some claim that the burning of Columbia at the end of the Civil War was the result of a scorched earth policy by the retreating Confederate soldiers.

Among those who were disappointed, there was yet another person who walked his own path. Five days after General Lee’s surrender, he went to a theater in Washington with a pistol, entered a box, and … bang! He shot President Abraham Lincoln, who had been recently inaugurated for his second term.

That night Lincoln was watching a play from the box. His guard had gone out to get a coffee. In that one week, two major events occurred: Lincoln’s victory and defeat. The next day, Lincoln had been planning to receive his son, a soldier, who was visiting from Appomattox. The boy had witnessed the meeting between General Grant, the commander of the Union Army, and General Lee that ended with the surrender. Lincoln had wanted to hear how the surrender unfolded.

This is the dear price of a constitution.

The Constitution was authored in Philadelphia through a very difficult and very long process, over 12 years. When I visited the building in which the founding fathers of the U.S. met, I imagined who was sitting on which chair and what he was saying. I also imagined George Washington sitting on the chair of the president of the convention, at the front of the room.

I imagined how patient the founding fathers were. That is the next lesson about democracy that I learned. Building a democracy takes patience. It also requires tolerance. Like us, the U.S. did not have a constitution when it declared its independence.

The founding fathers had to have discussions to formulate what kind of constitution they wanted. Because of very difficult trade-offs between various interests, the meeting to frame the Constitution went on for 12 years.

The four big issues were: how to choose a president, how to designate state representatives in the federal government, what to do about slavery and creating a taxation system that doesn’t diminish the power of the states.

Indonesia had a similar experience when, for the first time, we wanted to have a democratic constitution. Our first election in 1955 was a success; democratic and peaceful. A constitutional assembly, the MPR (People’s Consultative Assembly), was formed.* Meetings to frame the constitution began. One year passed and it was not completed. Two years and it was not completed. Three years and it was not completed. Four years and it was not completed. Brother Karno was impatient. Brother Karno took a shortcut: He issued the Decree of July 5, 1959. The constitutional assembly was dissolved. The Constitution of 1945 was reinstated.

In subsequent developments, guided democracy was in effect, which was followed by Pancasila democracy in the Harto era.

The condition was different. The U.S. was formed by the union of the states. Even without a central government, state governments had been running. For that reason, many supported Brother Karno’s action. Of course, there were also many who regretted it.

*Translator’s note: The constitutional assembly in 1955 was not the MPR (People’s Consultative Assembly), but rather the Konstituante (Constitutional Assembly).