Reconstruction

Redemption Era of Jim Crow, Reconstruction Ends after Contested 1876 Election
Civil War and Reconstruction

After Grant: Southern Redemption and Jim Crow, Reconstruction Ends after Contested 1876 Election

11/09/2024 Bruce Strom 0

What were his greatest accomplishments? Chernow states that “Grant showed a deep reservoir of courage in directing the fight against the Ku Klux Klan and crushing the largest wave of domestic terrorism in American history. It was Grant who helped to weave the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteen Amendments into the basic fabric of American life.”
Chernow rues: “Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote. Black sharecroppers would be degraded to the level of debt-ridden serfs, bound to their former plantation owners. After 1877, the black community in the South steadily lost ground until a rigid apartheid separated the races completely, a terrible state of affairs that would not be fixed until the rise of the civil rights movement after World War II.” […]

President Ulysses S Grant, White Supremacy Triumphs, and Gilded Age Corruption During his Second Term
Civil War and Reconstruction

President Ulysses S Grant, White Supremacy Triumphs, and Gilded Age Corruption During his Second Term

10/27/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Why was President Grant easily reelected to second term, when there were so many problems faced in his first term? Why did the Liberal Republican Party become a third party? Was it truly liberal? Why did the Union Army fight several battles in Louisiana after the Civil War? How did […]

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

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

10/26/2024 Bruce Strom 0

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?
Current Events and History

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
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
Civil Rights

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. […]

Hannah Arendt Questions Whether School Desegregation Was Wise: Little Rock and Civil Rights
Civil Rights

Hannah Arendt: Was School Desegregation Was Wise? Little Rock & Civil Rights v States’ Rights

08/14/2024 Bruce Strom 0

In 1957 the NAACP registered nine black students to attend a previously all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. At first Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to “preserve the peace” by preventing these black students from attending. This civil resistance offended President Eisenhower. As a prior general, he viewed this as insubordination, so he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard, instead instructing them to protect the African American students. This did not stop the bullying and taunting, one of the black students had acid thrown in her face. There was a protracted struggle, the public schools were closed for a year, and after reopening black students had to face both white mobs and bullying for several years. […]

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

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. […]

NAACP Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston Challenge Jim Crow in the Courts
Civil Rights

NAACP Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston Challenge Jim Crow in the Courts

02/14/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Chief Justice Fred Vinson scheduled oral arguments for December 1952, but the justices were hopelessly fractured, Vinson did not want to abandon Plessy. A second round of oral arguments were scheduled for December 1953, but Chief Justice Fred Vinson died of a heart attack in September. After attending his funeral, Justice Felix Frankfurter quipped to a friend, “This is the first indication I have ever had that there is a god.”
President Eisenhower appointed long-time Republican Earl Warren as Chief Justice, he later said this was his life’s “biggest damn fool mistake.” Earl Warren convinced his fellow justices that this needed to be a unanimous decision. Warren said this, summarizing the court’s opinion, “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.” […]

1876 Contested Presidential Election: Precedent for January 6th Elector Scheme?
Civil Rights

1876 Contested Presidential Election: Precedent for January 6th Fake Elector Scheme?

11/15/2023 Bruce Strom 2

Rehnquist notes that during the campaign, Hayes released a statement “recognizing the need for Southerners to control their own affairs but calling for respect for the constitutional rights of all citizens,” a promise made by Southerners that they never intended to keep. Hayes tried waving the bloody shirt during the campaign, but not only was Tilden a New York Democrat, he was over the mandatory draft age, as he was in his mid-forties during the Civil War. Everyone expected that the vote would be close in this Presidential election. […]