On February 4, 1870, the Chicago Tribune announced: “The rebellion may now be regarded as over and the great war finished.” Referring to the Civil War, which had ended just five years before, the paper’s editor explained: “That rebellion was undertaken to preserve and perpetuate human slavery, and, within ten years from the date of the first secession ordinance, the great struggle has been terminated in the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments….”
Heather, thank you for the history lesson on these important amendments. I’d never heard about the Black Codes. The inclusion of prison enslaved labor, combined with the unequal incarceration of people of color and the poor, is a stain on the justice system to this day.
Heather, this such a fine historical framing of the mess in which we find ourselves now, and one that your vision declaws and restores confidence in our power to overcome the crazies if the will to do so is there.
I hereby declare that Heather Cox Richardson be appointed the United States of America's national history teacher, due to her deep understanding of our history, and her profound ability to put current events into historical perspective in a readily accessible literary manner.
Furthermore...
I declare that her "Letters from an American" be required reading by every elected official, and their staffs, and be provided free of charge to every public and private high school student.
There! That should resolve a lot of the problems we've been having lately.
We shouldn't criticize those past lawmakers for any shortcomings in implementing those amendments today. Keep in mind that those who resent and oppose those laws have had over a hundred years to chip away at how they're implemented, plus once again they've packed the courts and legislaures with their paid stooges. Now is the time to reassert the intent of the Reconstruction Amendments.
It's up to us. We can still achieve this with refreshed laws and our votes .
Thank you, Heather for this reminder about how little The United State respects and follows the 14th Amendment - one of the most important Amendments written. I have been concentrating so much on Section 3 recently that I have neglected Section 2 "establishing that states that did not permit Black men to vote would lose representation in Congress in proportion to the number of people they disenfranchised". States, such as Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, and all of that ilk, should lose 1 member of the House of Representatives proportional to the number of people they disenfranchise by gerrymandering, purging, and other schemes to limit the number of avid Democrats to vote.
How appropriate that the wisdom expressed by Edwin Ngetich should come to our shores from Africa.
He gets right to the heart of the matter. Well, soul, actually.
One of the overwhelming lessons of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments is that we must be constantly critical of and vigilant regarding our ability to "get things right" the first time. If we fail to track our performance, the essential learning is lost regarding what works and what does not, what options exist to correct the deficiencies, how best to improve our legislative guidance--and why. Look no further than Article V of the Constitution for evidence that our Founding Fathers understood this truth. Absent this mindset and the practices that give it life, we are trapped in the destructive snares of arrogance. Such blindness will never serve us well. Frustrating as it may be, we are engaged in a governance enterprise that has no end state; it is a work in progress under the best of circumstances and a downward spiral under the worst. It is for "we the people" to decide which it is and it will always be challenging. No one ever said it would be easy, and they were right.
Whatever else we may take from our current distress, there is ample evidence that a lot of Americans understand all of this and have no intention of giving up. With Heather's relentless microscope, we have the benefit of understanding how we got here. That is an essential first step toward figuring out how to get better.
The year 2024 will put us to the test like no other in my ninety years on the planet. Yes, not even the horror of World War II. Why? It goes back to Edwin's first sentence. In World War II, our lives were at stake; today, our souls are. We don't have to wonder what soulless life looks like; we have seen it before and it is visible today as well.
What we think has little impact if we do nothing. So we do need to show up and multiply our insights and energies. Three colleagues and I in Arizona have embarked on an endeavor to inform and motivate the now more than one third of Arizona voters who are registered as "No Party Preferred" to show up and make a difference. Other amazing endeavors are taking place here as well. At azindvoters.net, we seek to build on that foundation Edwin so effectively described. I don't know what impact we will have. What I do know is that the wisdom and inspiration in Letters from an American will aid our endeavors and operate to keep us in the game.
For 25 years, I was a civil rights lawyer enforcing the 14th Amendment, which among other things, was intended to bar insurrectionists like Trump from office. I predict the Supreme Court will so rule.
Alas, Will the Federal govt send in troops to Texas as 17 State Governors lend a hand to Abbott defying Federal laws regarding immigration? 1960’s anyone as Southern Governors tried to block integration? So ironic, these grandstanders, when a bill by the Senate solves most of those problems RIGHT NOW but their State Representatives don’t want to sign it because it would do exactly that! So, the 13th-15th amendments were a great idea. It’s the GOP Congress that has it backwards today in enforcing them. Southerners. Sigh.
Twenty-five historians signed onto the amicus brief explaining how the 14th was established and why Section 3 is so significant. That is a whole lot of award-winning experts all agreeing to the actual intentions of the written words. Heather, though I have not found out who all of the 25 are, I can only assume your name is among them. Scotus has been inundated with these briefs and rightfully so. All of these proceedings because of one imbecilic power-driven man who wants to be king, are unprecedented. We have never EVER witnessed a former president incite a band of people to commit insurrection. Is he one himself? Yes, he is. Why? Because January 6th was premeditated by him and others. I believe this to be fact.
The 14th Amendment and the documented intent of Congress could not be clearer insofar as banning anyone and everyone who engaged in insurrection, and who had previously been sworn to uphold the Constitution as a federal officer, from again holding any federal office. There is no exception for any federal office. I believe that the main issue that will confront the Supreme Court is the uniformity issue. This is a federal question, and the Court cannot countenance some states enforcing the ban and other states (such as those dominated by MAGA leaning state legislatures) ignoring it. I believe that the federal judiciary needs to take the lead in deciding the qualifications of federal officers, the results of which should be the law of the land.
Our Heather clearly enumerates how the federal government once surmounted the enslavers.
Thanks to ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, and other organs erected by the rich following the Powell memo, states under Republican control have been challenging the services and rights which we thought guaranteed.
Women in these states must cede their personal and family lives to ideologues such as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Howdy Doody. Persons, soil, water, and soil poisoned by polluters must accept much of that getting poisoned. The ill who can barely eke out a living on minimum wages must endure a new near-enslavement while the rich get richer. Those same persons must also endure indignities of below-minimum health care while Big Parma and private insurance companies all get much richer. Students must live with historic debt to the banks for "higher" education while corporate profiteers privatize university research that used to be public and for the public good.
Our Heather nicely follows the massive thefts and extortions that long ago used to be simply black and white, used to be called simply slavery.
Now its poisons permeate more widely, deeply. And as the Republicans enable this poisoning, they also show by their positions on aid to Ukraine that their real loyalty is to dictators like Putin.
They won't go away, these whom the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were thought to have set under civilization.
They're not at all civilized, but hydra-headed evil, not just owning slaves, but now also social media platforms further to spew hate. They are owning, too, regimes of standardized testing so schools further reduce humanities, our civilization further vulgarized.
Heather, thank you for the history lesson on these important amendments. I’d never heard about the Black Codes. The inclusion of prison enslaved labor, combined with the unequal incarceration of people of color and the poor, is a stain on the justice system to this day.
Heather, this such a fine historical framing of the mess in which we find ourselves now, and one that your vision declaws and restores confidence in our power to overcome the crazies if the will to do so is there.
I hereby declare that Heather Cox Richardson be appointed the United States of America's national history teacher, due to her deep understanding of our history, and her profound ability to put current events into historical perspective in a readily accessible literary manner.
Furthermore...
I declare that her "Letters from an American" be required reading by every elected official, and their staffs, and be provided free of charge to every public and private high school student.
There! That should resolve a lot of the problems we've been having lately.
When I used to hear, beware of history repeating itself . . . . I never anticipated living through it. Sadly, we are there.
We shouldn't criticize those past lawmakers for any shortcomings in implementing those amendments today. Keep in mind that those who resent and oppose those laws have had over a hundred years to chip away at how they're implemented, plus once again they've packed the courts and legislaures with their paid stooges. Now is the time to reassert the intent of the Reconstruction Amendments.
It's up to us. We can still achieve this with refreshed laws and our votes .
Thank you, Heather for this reminder about how little The United State respects and follows the 14th Amendment - one of the most important Amendments written. I have been concentrating so much on Section 3 recently that I have neglected Section 2 "establishing that states that did not permit Black men to vote would lose representation in Congress in proportion to the number of people they disenfranchised". States, such as Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, and all of that ilk, should lose 1 member of the House of Representatives proportional to the number of people they disenfranchise by gerrymandering, purging, and other schemes to limit the number of avid Democrats to vote.
And 154 years after ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, the same struggle continues.
How appropriate that the wisdom expressed by Edwin Ngetich should come to our shores from Africa.
He gets right to the heart of the matter. Well, soul, actually.
One of the overwhelming lessons of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments is that we must be constantly critical of and vigilant regarding our ability to "get things right" the first time. If we fail to track our performance, the essential learning is lost regarding what works and what does not, what options exist to correct the deficiencies, how best to improve our legislative guidance--and why. Look no further than Article V of the Constitution for evidence that our Founding Fathers understood this truth. Absent this mindset and the practices that give it life, we are trapped in the destructive snares of arrogance. Such blindness will never serve us well. Frustrating as it may be, we are engaged in a governance enterprise that has no end state; it is a work in progress under the best of circumstances and a downward spiral under the worst. It is for "we the people" to decide which it is and it will always be challenging. No one ever said it would be easy, and they were right.
Whatever else we may take from our current distress, there is ample evidence that a lot of Americans understand all of this and have no intention of giving up. With Heather's relentless microscope, we have the benefit of understanding how we got here. That is an essential first step toward figuring out how to get better.
The year 2024 will put us to the test like no other in my ninety years on the planet. Yes, not even the horror of World War II. Why? It goes back to Edwin's first sentence. In World War II, our lives were at stake; today, our souls are. We don't have to wonder what soulless life looks like; we have seen it before and it is visible today as well.
What we think has little impact if we do nothing. So we do need to show up and multiply our insights and energies. Three colleagues and I in Arizona have embarked on an endeavor to inform and motivate the now more than one third of Arizona voters who are registered as "No Party Preferred" to show up and make a difference. Other amazing endeavors are taking place here as well. At azindvoters.net, we seek to build on that foundation Edwin so effectively described. I don't know what impact we will have. What I do know is that the wisdom and inspiration in Letters from an American will aid our endeavors and operate to keep us in the game.
And yet here we are, fighting the Civil War to the present day.
For 25 years, I was a civil rights lawyer enforcing the 14th Amendment, which among other things, was intended to bar insurrectionists like Trump from office. I predict the Supreme Court will so rule.
Alas, Will the Federal govt send in troops to Texas as 17 State Governors lend a hand to Abbott defying Federal laws regarding immigration? 1960’s anyone as Southern Governors tried to block integration? So ironic, these grandstanders, when a bill by the Senate solves most of those problems RIGHT NOW but their State Representatives don’t want to sign it because it would do exactly that! So, the 13th-15th amendments were a great idea. It’s the GOP Congress that has it backwards today in enforcing them. Southerners. Sigh.
Twenty-five historians signed onto the amicus brief explaining how the 14th was established and why Section 3 is so significant. That is a whole lot of award-winning experts all agreeing to the actual intentions of the written words. Heather, though I have not found out who all of the 25 are, I can only assume your name is among them. Scotus has been inundated with these briefs and rightfully so. All of these proceedings because of one imbecilic power-driven man who wants to be king, are unprecedented. We have never EVER witnessed a former president incite a band of people to commit insurrection. Is he one himself? Yes, he is. Why? Because January 6th was premeditated by him and others. I believe this to be fact.
The 14th Amendment and the documented intent of Congress could not be clearer insofar as banning anyone and everyone who engaged in insurrection, and who had previously been sworn to uphold the Constitution as a federal officer, from again holding any federal office. There is no exception for any federal office. I believe that the main issue that will confront the Supreme Court is the uniformity issue. This is a federal question, and the Court cannot countenance some states enforcing the ban and other states (such as those dominated by MAGA leaning state legislatures) ignoring it. I believe that the federal judiciary needs to take the lead in deciding the qualifications of federal officers, the results of which should be the law of the land.
Such a timely and relevant essay! Thank you Heather. I know its about the post civil war but is even more relevant today!
Our Heather clearly enumerates how the federal government once surmounted the enslavers.
Thanks to ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, and other organs erected by the rich following the Powell memo, states under Republican control have been challenging the services and rights which we thought guaranteed.
Women in these states must cede their personal and family lives to ideologues such as the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Howdy Doody. Persons, soil, water, and soil poisoned by polluters must accept much of that getting poisoned. The ill who can barely eke out a living on minimum wages must endure a new near-enslavement while the rich get richer. Those same persons must also endure indignities of below-minimum health care while Big Parma and private insurance companies all get much richer. Students must live with historic debt to the banks for "higher" education while corporate profiteers privatize university research that used to be public and for the public good.
Our Heather nicely follows the massive thefts and extortions that long ago used to be simply black and white, used to be called simply slavery.
Now its poisons permeate more widely, deeply. And as the Republicans enable this poisoning, they also show by their positions on aid to Ukraine that their real loyalty is to dictators like Putin.
They won't go away, these whom the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were thought to have set under civilization.
They're not at all civilized, but hydra-headed evil, not just owning slaves, but now also social media platforms further to spew hate. They are owning, too, regimes of standardized testing so schools further reduce humanities, our civilization further vulgarized.
I wish this Letter could be force-fed to every Republican currently occupying an elected position.