"There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party."
-- Ulysses Grant, 1861
Grant was the general of freedom who vanquished the armies of slavery, and the president who expanded and defended freedom. We must summon similar spirit and resolve at this time.
"There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party."
-- Ulysses Grant, 1861
Grant was the general of freedom who vanquished the armies of slavery, and the president who expanded and defended freedom. We must summon similar spirit and resolve at this time.
The KKK is alive and well - at least in my home state of Florida. My great-grandfather built 3 Baptist churches in the northeastern corner of the state, where his grandparents came as homesteaders in the 19th century. Homesteading meant there - as throughout the North American continent - displacing and killing off the indigenous nations. There were 18 nations in Florida. My mother and lots of her friends and family are deeply loyal to the QAnon and other conspiracy theories, thinking of Trump as the second messiah. The inscription on her grandfather's tombstone in Palatka Florida's white cemetery - as my relatives and everyone else white called it: "A friend to his fellow man and a Lover of Christ." The big letters on the pediment: KKK.
That's a long way of saying that Grant did not vanquish the armies of slavery. It is our duty to do that.
Rosalind, you are correct that KKK sympathies have not been vanquished. Here in Oregon we have a sordid history with the KKK which reached a great strength in the 1920s, forcing Gov. Olcott in his gubernatorial run for a second term to have to choose between winning or speaking out against the Klan. To his credit, he chose to speak out against the Klan and he lost re-election. To his dying day, he never regretted that decision.
Well, today we have another skirmish in Oregon with deranged thinking as the Oregon GOP supports a false flag theory about the Jan 6 raid on the Capitol. The disturbing anti-democratic forces of history never seem to go away, lying dormant in the spinal fluid of the nation, popping out like a pandemic when the opportunity arises.
I intently read your story. Personal histories are often filled with details and nuance not available elsewhere. Thank you for sharing it with us. The steps you have taken from white nationalism, bigotry and conspiracies cause me to embrace you in spirit and appreciation.
Thank you, Fern. It's strange, how some children take in their environment differently than even their siblings. I was the little girl in Sunday School who sang "Jesus loves all the little children of the world: red and yellow, black and white - they are precious in his sight." I took that seriously - decided Jesus had it right and the grownups around me had it wrong. It's tough having a different reality from everyone else when you're small. What really saved me were the kids that were my friends: Jewish kids and Cuban refugee kids. The only ones I knew whose parents led them to reading and classical music.
Rosalind, both of my parents were victims of the Holocaust. They never claimed to be survivors because they were not in camps. My maternal grandparents were gassed in the camp called Chelmno, in a van with other people. My parents met in NY in 1946 and married after 6 weeks. They moved to a rural town in NC where my sister and I were raised. I saw the Ku Klux Klan only once but that was enough. It was when we were coming back from Temple and we had to go into a тАЬround aboutтАЭ to get home. In that circle was approximately 12-15 men dressed in hoods, burning a cross. My parents were silent but their hearts were beating so hard. They owned a clothing store and you can imagine that these jerks were their customers.
Thank you for sharing your story, Marlene. A large part of my family and my friendship circle is Jewish. My daughter has a Jewish dad. It all feels very personal to me.
Rosalind, We have had some similar feelings and experiences in childhood, although mine were less sharp than yours. I had more time than most to consider the differences between me, my parents and the other girls on the block because my mother worked. Her influence on me was less as a result of that; I had more time to pursue my thoughts and interests. It is a lonely breach when you are young, and it became more tense when I became involved in civil rights in my preteens. For some of us the differences may be born in the bone.
Yes, that song struck me the same way. Although I gave up "Christianity", I have held onto many of the teachings of Christ. He was quite a progressive man. St. Paul, not so much.
I too fondly remember that song from my all white church - so later I used those images of black, white, red, & yellow children during Black History month on my library display wall- the children holding hands - it spoke volumes about my school and the need for everyone to get along.
I wondered how those who give the name тАЬmessiahтАЭ to a compulsive liar-virus super spreader- murderer-racist can possibly justify it. KKK genes go deep. Be careful!
What is your experience with the Klan? One hundred years ago, in places like Florida - one of the most brutal slave states - my family was there. Do you mean to say that I might be susceptible to the KKK gene? On the contrary - the racism of "nice white people" who call themselves Christians made me jump ship when I was just a child. It is the general myth of white supremacy that spawned and spawns the KKK. What most people don't know is that, in the ancient Greco-Roman world, white was the color of the barbarian northern tribes of Celts, Goths and Gauli (Paul's letter to the Galatians was to them). Brown was beautiful then. The European tribes, pale, blue-eyed, wild hair, too big and muscular, were - according to the historian Titus - fascinating but grotesque.
Rosalind, I think Gigi is concerned for your safety, I can't imagine anyone here thinks you have a buried predilection for racism. I do appreciate what you have been through. My sister and I walked away from an extremely racist and hateful family without any baggage that we can identify. When we hit puberty we suddenly became aware of the hatred fomented by our dad and backed away as best we could until we were able to leave home. We were lucky in that family on both sides of our parents were not known to be in any organized and violent groups. Our father came the closest, but he hated too many people of all kinds to ever participate in a white supremacy group, other than I would bet funding them. My husband and I were just discussing your point about Greco-Roman world earlier this week. It is very ironic.
My family history is rather different. An ancestor's name is on the Pennsylvania Memorial; we're related by marriage to US Grant; a great aunt worked for Vito Marcantonio; my de facto grandfather, mentor to my parents, was a Freedom Rider, partnering with John Lewis; Grinny (we couldn't pronounce Granny) marched with Rev Dr King in 1963; parents were Quakers dedicated to the NAACP and pacifism. I try to live up to their ideals through activism, but they set a high bar. I'm not gloating or bragging, just thankful for these roots of my raising. Unlike today's traitors who admire slavers and traitors, much of the North has a heritage worth embracing.
I completely relate to your family situation. You and your husband might be interested in the book one of my professors wrote - also our study text for our semester on Galatians: Galatians re-imagined - Reading with the eyes of the vanquished. Dr. Brigitte Kahl. She uses the imagery of the altar in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin which celebrated the Greco-Roman defeat over the Celtic Galatians in 225 BC. It is breathtaking and shows the Greeks as gods and goddesses, while the Celts are monsters.
It's my experience that people from the South who are Good People are better Good People than people from elsewhere in the country, because it's harder to do that down there.
When I was in Texas in 1968 running the Oleo Strut Coffeehouse at Fort Hood, we had an attorney, Davis Bragg. 4th-generation Texan, grad of Baylor, lifelong Southern progressive, long-term resident of Killeen - could have been a stand-in for Atticus Finch. The first time we went out to have dinner at his home, we found it waaaay out in the isolated countryside, and had to drive about half a mile back on the property to get to the house. I commented on how far back the house was from the road, to which he replied, "Yes, it's out of range." And that was when I knew me and Toto weren't in Kansas anymore.
Rosalind, I was responding to your original statement that some consider 45 as the second messiah. Huckabee Sanders and others in the admin made comments like that early on. I have no experience with the KKK, having been brought up in the north where racism was a little more subtle. I remember reading about the lynchings when I was young and being shocked that Eisenhower did not/could not put a stop to it. When I taught school there was a serious effort to stop bullying which obviously failed. Your post made me realize how deep the roots of hatred are, and I applaud you for speaking up. The previous and failed fascinating but grotesque potus set an example of threatening those who speak up. Thank you Linda and Ally for expressing my fear better than I did.
Sounds very much like any common-garden, budding dictator you might care to name....they all had their "fan clubs" and 5th columnists prior to installing themselves.
Unfortunately his turn as President also included very significant corruption on the part of his nominees and supporterswhich he did little to control and paid the political price; he is remembered by historians as a being a weak and ineffective President far removed from his military glory and tarnishing somewhat his memory. He was also President overseeing a particularly nasty period for Native Americans following Little Big Horn.
Here is a kinder look at the Grant administration. "Most dramatically, Grant used both federal troops and the newly established Justice Department to fight terrorism against Southern blacks, particularly by the Ku Klux Klan, which had grown into a large and formidable force in the years after the Civil War. тАЬBy 1872, under GrantтАЩs leadership,тАЭ Chernow writes, тАЬthe Ku Klux Klan had been smashed in the South,тАЭ although another group of the same name would emerge in 1915." Wait! There's more here:
Many thanks, Lynell. I'll get into him in greater detail now. The period already fascinates me. I've just finished Goodwins Team of Rivals and will now start HCR's Death of Reconstruction before attacking Foner's Reconstruction. Christmas was a fruitful period for shortening my book "wish list" and the family is most cooperative!
I bought myself HCR's "How the South Won the Civil War" for Christmas. I'll be thrilled as soon as I can steal some time to start reading it! This community (you included!) has kept me so busy reading shared links, sparking questions that send me to the Google gods, I barely have time for anything else. Not complaining...just sayin'
I just finished тАЬHow the South Won the Civil WarтАЭ. The book so enlightened me as to why we are at this point in time. Accountability for seditious acts against our democracy must happen whenever they occur.
I also thought it was great. I listened to it on Audible. It was read by Heather herself and was just outstanding. I usually prefer тАЬrealтАЭ books but my schedule is so overwhelmingly busy that listening to it while doing other things (like eating lunch) was the only way I could make the time to тАЬreadтАЭ it. I am now listening to HeatherтАЩs Wounded Knee. Read by someone else but the content is so devastating it is a little easier to hear in a different voice.
The title alone caught my attention! I am expecting to learn more by reading, but trust that now having listened to her chats and reading her many Letters, that I will pass over being scared and head straight to informed and controlled angry.
I recently finished that book. ItтАЩs fascinating and I couldnтАЩt put it down. Sadly though, one of my take-aways was that some things will never change.
I, too, have read her book about how the South won the civil war. I felt deeply sad, afterwards, thinking things will never change-especially when things like the Charlottesville riots and George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, etc, etc. happen, and of course Trumpism. But then I talk to my children-in their 20s and early 30s-and their friends, and I hear them speak about how of course equality really means equality, and I see we now have a Biden-Harris administration and I begin to feel hopeful, just a little bit.
I haven't read it yet, but your reaction reminds me of my thoughts and feelings while reading Chinese history at university. Human nature, red in tooth and claw, doesn't seem to have advanced a hell of a lot in the span of history.
Oh no! I understand... I wasnтАЩt scared because I didnтАЩt know how much I didnтАЩt know! But once you stick your toes in the water, you will dive into the deep end! I kept wondering, тАШwhat was I taught in high school? College? Maybe I was not so interested in History, but at 69 , I am determined to catch up. Thank God for Heather! And I border on obnoxious as I proselytize anyone and everyone who will give me 30 seconds or more!
Jump in! And please keep me (us) posted on your progress and thoughts!
Grant's comment in hindsight on Electoral College -
"In giving the South negro suffrage, we have given
the old slaveholders forty votes in the Electoral College. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of Reconstruction. ... I am clear now that it would have been better for the North to have postponed suffrage, Reconstruction, State Governments, for ten years, and held the South in a territorial condition. ... It would have avoided the scandals of the State Governments, saved money, and enabled the Northern merchants, farmers, and laboring men to reorganize society in the South. But
we made our scheme, and must do what we can with it. Suffrage once given can never be taken away and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it." *
It's really kind of sad. Even as they struggled to see black people with humanity, they still needed someone under their boot, and so that fell to the Native Americans.
Good points Stuart, thank you, but I still rate Grant fairly high. In recent years the consensus on both general and president has swung in Grant's favor, not least due to vigorous support for the Freedpeople in his first term. (in the second the North lost the will to fight the "Redeemers" who murdered Reconstruction.) We need leaders like him in our current time of troubles. And maybe this time the traitors who admire slavers and traitors will be suppressed properly.
Indeed but it might be a flagrant case of the "Peter Principal", or as with Churchill, he had a role to play to save the nation supporting Lincoln and thereafter he was a little out of his depth. Taft was to my mind another case...a great support to Teddy Roosevelt but should then have gone to the Supreme Court rather than the Presdiency thereafter
Imagine how things might have been if Lincoln ran with Ben Butler instead of Johnson. Atrocious Andrew did much to thwart Reconstruction, properly construed as rebuilding democracy in America, not just rebuilding the Southern economy. Yet even Johnson's spirit rests easier knowing that he is no longer -- the Worst President Ever!
Here's the deal. It's not like Pierce, Buchanan, Johnson I, Harding, Nixon, Bush II suddenly got better. It's just that Trumpsky is so very much worse. And if (ye gods) he gets a second term, he'll be even worse than ... himself!
I haven't been so fond of the term "patriot" since the Patriot Act. Just as my neighbors who display huge American flags (often in tatters, never taken down at night or in bad weather - very poor flag protocol) are generally the same ones who had the big T**** signs, making the flag a symbol of division, naming products or parties "Patriot" seems to have the goal of getting rid of democracy and installing a strongman dictator.
I never tire of sharing this quotation:
"There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party."
-- Ulysses Grant, 1861
Grant was the general of freedom who vanquished the armies of slavery, and the president who expanded and defended freedom. We must summon similar spirit and resolve at this time.
The KKK is alive and well - at least in my home state of Florida. My great-grandfather built 3 Baptist churches in the northeastern corner of the state, where his grandparents came as homesteaders in the 19th century. Homesteading meant there - as throughout the North American continent - displacing and killing off the indigenous nations. There were 18 nations in Florida. My mother and lots of her friends and family are deeply loyal to the QAnon and other conspiracy theories, thinking of Trump as the second messiah. The inscription on her grandfather's tombstone in Palatka Florida's white cemetery - as my relatives and everyone else white called it: "A friend to his fellow man and a Lover of Christ." The big letters on the pediment: KKK.
That's a long way of saying that Grant did not vanquish the armies of slavery. It is our duty to do that.
Rosalind, you are correct that KKK sympathies have not been vanquished. Here in Oregon we have a sordid history with the KKK which reached a great strength in the 1920s, forcing Gov. Olcott in his gubernatorial run for a second term to have to choose between winning or speaking out against the Klan. To his credit, he chose to speak out against the Klan and he lost re-election. To his dying day, he never regretted that decision.
Well, today we have another skirmish in Oregon with deranged thinking as the Oregon GOP supports a false flag theory about the Jan 6 raid on the Capitol. The disturbing anti-democratic forces of history never seem to go away, lying dormant in the spinal fluid of the nation, popping out like a pandemic when the opportunity arises.
Are there any states without a sordid KKK history? I don't know the answer, so someone please help us out with any that have done better. thanks.
Does New York have one? If so, I'm sad to say I'm unaware.
Thats exactly what I was wondering. If so, have never heard or read about it - but somehow, I doubt NYS was squeaky clean either.
If you go onto Southern Poverty Law CenterтАЩs website, they trace hate groups throughout the US. I think itтАЩs splc.org.
I intently read your story. Personal histories are often filled with details and nuance not available elsewhere. Thank you for sharing it with us. The steps you have taken from white nationalism, bigotry and conspiracies cause me to embrace you in spirit and appreciation.
Thank you, Fern. It's strange, how some children take in their environment differently than even their siblings. I was the little girl in Sunday School who sang "Jesus loves all the little children of the world: red and yellow, black and white - they are precious in his sight." I took that seriously - decided Jesus had it right and the grownups around me had it wrong. It's tough having a different reality from everyone else when you're small. What really saved me were the kids that were my friends: Jewish kids and Cuban refugee kids. The only ones I knew whose parents led them to reading and classical music.
Rosalind, both of my parents were victims of the Holocaust. They never claimed to be survivors because they were not in camps. My maternal grandparents were gassed in the camp called Chelmno, in a van with other people. My parents met in NY in 1946 and married after 6 weeks. They moved to a rural town in NC where my sister and I were raised. I saw the Ku Klux Klan only once but that was enough. It was when we were coming back from Temple and we had to go into a тАЬround aboutтАЭ to get home. In that circle was approximately 12-15 men dressed in hoods, burning a cross. My parents were silent but their hearts were beating so hard. They owned a clothing store and you can imagine that these jerks were their customers.
Thank you for sharing your story, Marlene. A large part of my family and my friendship circle is Jewish. My daughter has a Jewish dad. It all feels very personal to me.
I married an Irish Catholic from CA 44 years ago. Our kids are JIrish.
FERN MCBRIDE just now
Rosalind, We have had some similar feelings and experiences in childhood, although mine were less sharp than yours. I had more time than most to consider the differences between me, my parents and the other girls on the block because my mother worked. Her influence on me was less as a result of that; I had more time to pursue my thoughts and interests. It is a lonely breach when you are young, and it became more tense when I became involved in civil rights in my preteens. For some of us the differences may be born in the bone.
Yes, that song struck me the same way. Although I gave up "Christianity", I have held onto many of the teachings of Christ. He was quite a progressive man. St. Paul, not so much.
My take on Paul: he was an entrepreneur. Jesus was a peacenik.
Thank you for the special reminder of that song. I remember singing it as a child too.
I too fondly remember that song from my all white church - so later I used those images of black, white, red, & yellow children during Black History month on my library display wall- the children holding hands - it spoke volumes about my school and the need for everyone to get along.
It's the prelude to Ray Stevens's "Everything is Beautiful," a pop-gospel hit in 1970.
I wondered how those who give the name тАЬmessiahтАЭ to a compulsive liar-virus super spreader- murderer-racist can possibly justify it. KKK genes go deep. Be careful!
What is your experience with the Klan? One hundred years ago, in places like Florida - one of the most brutal slave states - my family was there. Do you mean to say that I might be susceptible to the KKK gene? On the contrary - the racism of "nice white people" who call themselves Christians made me jump ship when I was just a child. It is the general myth of white supremacy that spawned and spawns the KKK. What most people don't know is that, in the ancient Greco-Roman world, white was the color of the barbarian northern tribes of Celts, Goths and Gauli (Paul's letter to the Galatians was to them). Brown was beautiful then. The European tribes, pale, blue-eyed, wild hair, too big and muscular, were - according to the historian Titus - fascinating but grotesque.
Rosalind, I think Gigi is concerned for your safety, I can't imagine anyone here thinks you have a buried predilection for racism. I do appreciate what you have been through. My sister and I walked away from an extremely racist and hateful family without any baggage that we can identify. When we hit puberty we suddenly became aware of the hatred fomented by our dad and backed away as best we could until we were able to leave home. We were lucky in that family on both sides of our parents were not known to be in any organized and violent groups. Our father came the closest, but he hated too many people of all kinds to ever participate in a white supremacy group, other than I would bet funding them. My husband and I were just discussing your point about Greco-Roman world earlier this week. It is very ironic.
My family history is rather different. An ancestor's name is on the Pennsylvania Memorial; we're related by marriage to US Grant; a great aunt worked for Vito Marcantonio; my de facto grandfather, mentor to my parents, was a Freedom Rider, partnering with John Lewis; Grinny (we couldn't pronounce Granny) marched with Rev Dr King in 1963; parents were Quakers dedicated to the NAACP and pacifism. I try to live up to their ideals through activism, but they set a high bar. I'm not gloating or bragging, just thankful for these roots of my raising. Unlike today's traitors who admire slavers and traitors, much of the North has a heritage worth embracing.
I am very grateful there were families like yours. Where would we be without them?
I completely relate to your family situation. You and your husband might be interested in the book one of my professors wrote - also our study text for our semester on Galatians: Galatians re-imagined - Reading with the eyes of the vanquished. Dr. Brigitte Kahl. She uses the imagery of the altar in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin which celebrated the Greco-Roman defeat over the Celtic Galatians in 225 BC. It is breathtaking and shows the Greeks as gods and goddesses, while the Celts are monsters.
Interesting. We will take a look. thanks!
Racism is learned, not inherited. Despite your family's past, you seem like a good mentor and role model. Your children chose their mother well!
It's my experience that people from the South who are Good People are better Good People than people from elsewhere in the country, because it's harder to do that down there.
When I was in Texas in 1968 running the Oleo Strut Coffeehouse at Fort Hood, we had an attorney, Davis Bragg. 4th-generation Texan, grad of Baylor, lifelong Southern progressive, long-term resident of Killeen - could have been a stand-in for Atticus Finch. The first time we went out to have dinner at his home, we found it waaaay out in the isolated countryside, and had to drive about half a mile back on the property to get to the house. I commented on how far back the house was from the road, to which he replied, "Yes, it's out of range." And that was when I knew me and Toto weren't in Kansas anymore.
Your attorney did a great job of overcoming the burden of the name "Davis Bragg."
Rosalind, I was responding to your original statement that some consider 45 as the second messiah. Huckabee Sanders and others in the admin made comments like that early on. I have no experience with the KKK, having been brought up in the north where racism was a little more subtle. I remember reading about the lynchings when I was young and being shocked that Eisenhower did not/could not put a stop to it. When I taught school there was a serious effort to stop bullying which obviously failed. Your post made me realize how deep the roots of hatred are, and I applaud you for speaking up. The previous and failed fascinating but grotesque potus set an example of threatening those who speak up. Thank you Linda and Ally for expressing my fear better than I did.
That is fascinating, about the white barbarians. I applaud you and others who have commented, for your ability to claim your own truth and walk away.
I read Gigi's comment as "watch your back". Be careful, man.
And the colour of grieving in China!
Sounds very much like any common-garden, budding dictator you might care to name....they all had their "fan clubs" and 5th columnists prior to installing themselves.
I know they were alive and busy when I used to live in Christmas, Florida.
Unfortunately his turn as President also included very significant corruption on the part of his nominees and supporterswhich he did little to control and paid the political price; he is remembered by historians as a being a weak and ineffective President far removed from his military glory and tarnishing somewhat his memory. He was also President overseeing a particularly nasty period for Native Americans following Little Big Horn.
Here is a kinder look at the Grant administration. "Most dramatically, Grant used both federal troops and the newly established Justice Department to fight terrorism against Southern blacks, particularly by the Ku Klux Klan, which had grown into a large and formidable force in the years after the Civil War. тАЬBy 1872, under GrantтАЩs leadership,тАЭ Chernow writes, тАЬthe Ku Klux Klan had been smashed in the South,тАЭ although another group of the same name would emerge in 1915." Wait! There's more here:
https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-s-grant-president-accomplishments-scandals-15th-amendment
Many thanks, Lynell. I'll get into him in greater detail now. The period already fascinates me. I've just finished Goodwins Team of Rivals and will now start HCR's Death of Reconstruction before attacking Foner's Reconstruction. Christmas was a fruitful period for shortening my book "wish list" and the family is most cooperative!
I bought myself HCR's "How the South Won the Civil War" for Christmas. I'll be thrilled as soon as I can steal some time to start reading it! This community (you included!) has kept me so busy reading shared links, sparking questions that send me to the Google gods, I barely have time for anything else. Not complaining...just sayin'
I have already read all of HCR's other books. I love the community as a ressource too.
Absolutely!
I just finished тАЬHow the South Won the Civil WarтАЭ. The book so enlightened me as to why we are at this point in time. Accountability for seditious acts against our democracy must happen whenever they occur.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
I was rapt by that book. The first of her books that I consumed. A real eye-opener
I also thought it was great. I listened to it on Audible. It was read by Heather herself and was just outstanding. I usually prefer тАЬrealтАЭ books but my schedule is so overwhelmingly busy that listening to it while doing other things (like eating lunch) was the only way I could make the time to тАЬreadтАЭ it. I am now listening to HeatherтАЩs Wounded Knee. Read by someone else but the content is so devastating it is a little easier to hear in a different voice.
The title alone caught my attention! I am expecting to learn more by reading, but trust that now having listened to her chats and reading her many Letters, that I will pass over being scared and head straight to informed and controlled angry.
I recently finished that book. ItтАЩs fascinating and I couldnтАЩt put it down. Sadly though, one of my take-aways was that some things will never change.
I, too, have read her book about how the South won the civil war. I felt deeply sad, afterwards, thinking things will never change-especially when things like the Charlottesville riots and George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, etc, etc. happen, and of course Trumpism. But then I talk to my children-in their 20s and early 30s-and their friends, and I hear them speak about how of course equality really means equality, and I see we now have a Biden-Harris administration and I begin to feel hopeful, just a little bit.
I haven't read it yet, but your reaction reminds me of my thoughts and feelings while reading Chinese history at university. Human nature, red in tooth and claw, doesn't seem to have advanced a hell of a lot in the span of history.
I'm just now getting into HCR's books. I'm scared.
Oh no! I understand... I wasnтАЩt scared because I didnтАЩt know how much I didnтАЩt know! But once you stick your toes in the water, you will dive into the deep end! I kept wondering, тАШwhat was I taught in high school? College? Maybe I was not so interested in History, but at 69 , I am determined to catch up. Thank God for Heather! And I border on obnoxious as I proselytize anyone and everyone who will give me 30 seconds or more!
Jump in! And please keep me (us) posted on your progress and thoughts!
Grant's comment in hindsight on Electoral College -
"In giving the South negro suffrage, we have given
the old slaveholders forty votes in the Electoral College. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of Reconstruction. ... I am clear now that it would have been better for the North to have postponed suffrage, Reconstruction, State Governments, for ten years, and held the South in a territorial condition. ... It would have avoided the scandals of the State Governments, saved money, and enabled the Northern merchants, farmers, and laboring men to reorganize society in the South. But
we made our scheme, and must do what we can with it. Suffrage once given can never be taken away and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it." *
https://archive.org/stream/cu31924014345379/cu31924014345379_djvu.txt
Thank you, Nancy. Grant is an underrated master of prose style. "I propose to move immediately on your works!"
It's really kind of sad. Even as they struggled to see black people with humanity, they still needed someone under their boot, and so that fell to the Native Americans.
Well, he didn't crush the Klan: he just drove it into hiding for awhile. Chernow meant well...
Thank you for this Lynell. Didn't know it was on the History Channel. I'll be ssure to watch it!ЁЯШК
Good points Stuart, thank you, but I still rate Grant fairly high. In recent years the consensus on both general and president has swung in Grant's favor, not least due to vigorous support for the Freedpeople in his first term. (in the second the North lost the will to fight the "Redeemers" who murdered Reconstruction.) We need leaders like him in our current time of troubles. And maybe this time the traitors who admire slavers and traitors will be suppressed properly.
Indeed but it might be a flagrant case of the "Peter Principal", or as with Churchill, he had a role to play to save the nation supporting Lincoln and thereafter he was a little out of his depth. Taft was to my mind another case...a great support to Teddy Roosevelt but should then have gone to the Supreme Court rather than the Presdiency thereafter
Imagine how things might have been if Lincoln ran with Ben Butler instead of Johnson. Atrocious Andrew did much to thwart Reconstruction, properly construed as rebuilding democracy in America, not just rebuilding the Southern economy. Yet even Johnson's spirit rests easier knowing that he is no longer -- the Worst President Ever!
A long time to wait to improve, if ever so slightly your reputation. 100 years and AA is still being emulated...and bested at his ignominious game.
I surmise that they're more likely to roll in their graves. Being the worst seems a badge of honor to some of this type, no?
Here's the deal. It's not like Pierce, Buchanan, Johnson I, Harding, Nixon, Bush II suddenly got better. It's just that Trumpsky is so very much worse. And if (ye gods) he gets a second term, he'll be even worse than ... himself!
A tragedy if tRump claims "Patriots" for his new party's name, when surely "Traitors" is most fitting.
I haven't been so fond of the term "patriot" since the Patriot Act. Just as my neighbors who display huge American flags (often in tatters, never taken down at night or in bad weather - very poor flag protocol) are generally the same ones who had the big T**** signs, making the flag a symbol of division, naming products or parties "Patriot" seems to have the goal of getting rid of democracy and installing a strongman dictator.
Sadly...
I was thinking "Grifters", perhaps.............
A spin-off from the far-right National Front Party here in France is already doing just that!
A spectacular comment. Many thanks!