Abraham Lincoln | Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

President Ulysses S Grant, First Term, Battling the KKK, Fighting for Civil Rights

President Ulysses S Grant, First Term, Defeating the KKK, Fighting for Civil Rights

10/26/2024 Bruce Strom 1

Ulysses S Grant won the presidential race handily. Although he won only 53% of the popular vote, he won the electoral college vote by a landslide, 214-80. “Bolstered by black and white carpetbagger votes, all southern states, with the notable exception of Georgia and Louisiana, where Klan violence was rife, tumbled into the Republican column. White violence had also diminished Republican turnout in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.”
Grant’s acceptance speech was curt, as usual. “The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear, if I can have the same support which has been given to me thus far.”
Former General Grant too often made decisions without asking for advice from more politically astute advisors, behaving like a general fearful of leaks tipping off enemy forces. His success as a general made him too complacent. Many years later, in hindsight, Grant expressed his regrets. “I entered the White House as President without any previous experience either in civil or political life. I thought I could run the government of the United States as I did the staff of my army. It was my mistake, and it led me into other mistakes.” […]

Atlantic Magazine Endorses Kamala Harris: Are Migrants To Blame? When Did Kamala Turn Black?

10/11/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Compare what he said when he announced his candidacy when going down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to his infamous quote in the Presidential Debate:
Trump, 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Trump, 2024: “In Springfield, (the Haitians) are eating the DAWGS. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
The Atlantic Magazine confirms this in another recent column, on how “The Trump Campaign Wants Everyone Talking About Race. The former president and his advisers’ strategy is to make white voters afraid, and they don’t care if they have to lie to do it.” […]

General Grant Post-Civil War and Reconstruction

General Grant Supporting Civil Rights and Reconstruction After the Civil War, and His Conflicts with Andrew Johnson

08/30/2024 Bruce Strom 1

When the new Congress convened, the House Judiciary Committee voted by a 5 to 4 vote to impeach President Johnson. When the Senate overwhelmingly voted to restore Stanton as Secretary of War, Grant vacated his interim position. In the upcoming political struggle, as Chernow relates, “The worse things looked for Andrew Johnson, the brighter was the political future for Grant. In early February, the New York Republican Convention endorsed Grant for President.”
During the Senate trial, Grant argued privately with Congressmen on the need to convict Johnson, but he thought it would be inappropriate for him to appear during the Senate trial. Chernow puts it best: “During the war, Grant had learned that it was better to let power seek him rather than to pursue it; a good general waited to be summoned by his superiors.”
In the end, Johnson was acquitted by one vote. Seven Republicans in total voted to acquit, as they did not think that Johnson’s actions were not the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution declared were needed for impeachment. Ulysses S Grant would handily win the 1868 Presidential election, and Grant’s Presidency will be featured in a future reflection. […]

States’ Rights v Federal Power From the Nation’s Founding to Civil War, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights Movement

08/23/2024 Bruce Strom 1

The Constitution was drafted to correct the many weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. Congressmen now swear allegiance to the United States rather than to their native states, as was done under the Articles. The Constitution grants the Federal government not only the power to levy taxes, but also to collect them, as well as sole control over trade and commerce. The Constitution establishes a Federal court system that can override state court decisions if there is a conflict. The US Congress, unlike the Confederation Congress, can pass routine legislation with a simple majority vote. […]

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves

07/13/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Gragston remembers: “Mr Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothing to do but teach the rest of us—we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us—how to read and write and figger. Mr Tabb liked us to know how to figger. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time coming, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been learning to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us—after getting somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoiling his slaves.” […]

General Grant’s Memoirs, Civil War Diplomacy, Post-War Events in Mexico and Santo Domingo

06/21/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Grant assures us: “The cause of the Great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began, it was a trite saying among some politicians,” including Lincoln in his House Divided Speech, “that a state half slave and half free cannot exist. All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down.” “Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed.” Grant then criticizes the Fugitive Slave Law, in force before the Civil War, that compelled Northerners to help apprehend and return runaway slaves. […]

Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Ending the American Civil War

06/19/2024 Bruce Strom 3

Robert E Lee ceremoniously offered his sword, but Grant refused it. Grant wrote out the terms, which paroled the Confederates on the condition that they “would not take arms against the Government of the United States.” “The arms, artillery and public property are to be parked and stacked.” “This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority as long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”
Grant recalls that when General Lee “read over that part of the terms about side arms, horses, and private property of the officers, he remarked, with some feeling, I thought, that this would have a happy effect upon his army.” […]

Gettysburg: Ordinary Soldiers and Generals Pickett and Longstreet Remember the Bloody Charges

Gettysburg: Ordinary Soldiers and Generals Pickett and Longstreet Remember the Bloody Sacrifices

06/12/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Confederate General George Pickett wrote a doleful letter to his fiancée on July 4th, 1863, the day after his disastrous Pickett’s Charge. Pickett remembered: “A little before three o’clock I rode up to Old Peter,” the nickname for General James Longstreet, “for orders. I found him like a great lion at bay. I have never seen him so grave and troubled. For several minutes after I had saluted him, he looked at me without speaking. Then, in an agonized voice, the reserve all gone, he said:
‘Pickett, I am being crucified at the thought of the sacrifice of life which this attack will make. I have instructed Alexander to watch the effect of our fire upon the enemy, and when it begins to tell he must take the responsibility and give you your orders, for I cannot.’” […]

Can Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans refuse to seat validly elected Democrats to the House in 2025?

04/03/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Had the law surrounding this issue had not continued to evolve, this indeed would be a troubling precedent. But the issue did evolve, and in 1969 the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren decided that Congress could not deny any duly elected Representative their seat in Congress unless they did not meet the qualifications for office listed in the Constitution, that they be at least twenty-years-old, have been a citizen for seven years, and live in the district they represent. The House of Representatives had attempted to refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell, a controversial black congressman who was embroiled in credible financial scandals. There was only one justice who dissented on technical grounds. […]

How Did the Speeches of Daniel Webster Inspire the North to Fight To Preserve the Union?

03/09/2024 Bruce Strom 1

Webster knew that “the question of paramount importance in our affairs is likely to be, for some time to come, the Preservation of the Union, or its Dissolution; and now power can decide this question, but that of the People themselves.”
South Carolina not only set bad precedent, but she had also enacted a state law that stated that state militia could resist federal forces sent in to enforce the laws passed by Congress under the Constitution. Thus, you could argue that the Civil War did not start in 1864, that it really started in the 1830’s. […]

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