Indeed. Andrew Johnson played a large role in undermining accountability. Capitalists and the people of the North were tired of the war, and cared little for the formerly enslaved, they resented the costs of Reconstruction. Political will evaporated. I fear the same thing will happen when our Trump nightmare comes to an end. There will be an initial push to hold Trump's enablers to account, but trials will grind for years and the public will lose interest, and the political class will seek a compromise in the interests of "healing" and "looking forward." I'm sure Trump's allies are aware of this likelihood. Powerful people are allergic to accountability.
I agree 100%! And Iām sure that is why Professor Bitecofer wrote this piece. We never hold to account those who attempt to subvert our Democratic Republic. We did it with the Compromise of 1877, we did it with Nixon, we did it with W and Cheney, and we did it with Trump and January 6th. We cannot do it again. As painful as it will be, we must hold Trump and his fascist cronies to account!
Excellent analysis! I grew up in Western North Carolina in the era of Segregation. By the time I started public school, integration had begun, at least in name.
In third grade, I was taught NC history in a textbook approved by the Daughters of the Confederacy. We learned about the āWilmington Race Riot,ā where a group of armed blacks threatened the city and were rightfully put down.
What we didnāt know and that virtually no one alive today knew, is that the story was a lie. The fact was that Josephus Daniels, former Secretary of the Navy and owner of the Raleigh News & Observer, together with the newspaperās co-owner, Julian Carr, engineered a coup dāetat of the duly elected Fusion (white Populist and black Republican) City Counsel of Wilmington, forcing them to resign at gun point.
Wilmington was the largest city in the state in 1898. Its population was majority black. The gang of white racists burned the newspaper and other black businesses, killed hundreds of black citizens, and drove out thousands of others.
They did the same thing in Goldsboro and Kinston. The militia of racist whites kept blacks from the polls all over the state, thereby installing as Governor, Charles B. Aycock and a majority white racist legislature that together installed Jim Crow throughout the state.
When I read it, my head exploded! The perpetrators of the outrage were able to subvert the narrative and whitewash history. They got away with it for 100 years!
Thereās much more to say about this, but Iām grateful to Eric Frasier that he had the determination and the courage to bring that sorry chapter of North Carolinaās history into the light.
Having attended Robert E. Lee High School in the 1970's and witnessed the refusal of the local school board to change the high school's name in the early 2020's, I can personally affirm that much has not changed, although I am now a frequent visitor to the South, not a resident. The most recent rush of Southern states to redistrict tells us all we need to know. Needless to say, I was not taught about the post Civil War period (Reconstruction and its aftermath) during my public schooling, although I certainly learned about "Northern aggression." It's now been 150 years since the dreadful presidential election of 1876 and we are still fighting the same battles in many ways. Where our nation would now be had the U.S. stayed the course and continued to ensure full black equality cannot be discerned in its totality, but the immediate aftermath of the Civil War provides a fairly decent picture of what was possible.
In 2016, the Electoral College tossed the election to Trump, despite Clinton's clear victory, and we have never been the same since. I continue to maintain hope that this national travesty will begin to be reversed in 2026 and the country will again move forward in the way that was initially envisioned after the Civil War and later after the Civil Rights movement. I believe the vast majority of the country is ready. This time, the traitors who have taken over our government must pay a substantial price.
I thought about that. I think you can look to the night that the Republican mob stopped the recount in Dade County Florida. Had they not done so, Gore might well have become President and we surely wouldnāt have gone into Iraq. So much has flowed from that moment, not the least of which is the make-up of the Supreme Court and the refusal to meaningfully address climate change.
Wonderful article, Rachel. Let's not forget the impact Plessy vs. Ferguson, 1896, added to the Confederacy victory. As scholar, activist, philosopher, and social critic Ambrose I. Lane so eloquently stated the Supreme Court's ruling on P v F legalized apartheid in the US. After the decision, monuments to the Confederate traitors were virtually mass produced, and enduring symbol of who was and is boss in the south. The recent court decision upholding the state of Alabama's right to deny representation of minority representation for minority districts is Jim Crow Law at its brutal level. Progress is not a given but must be fought for and defended every day.
Now, as then, lack of accountability has tragic consequences. In my town in Illinois - a "free" state - in a precursor event to the Civil War, the abolitionist minister and newspaper editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered by a mob, his printing press tossed into the Mississippi River. This strikes me as particularly relevant today, both for the racial animus and the attack on the press that published a disagreeable view. Continuing to tell the true stories is so important, though I increasingly fear we're moving in the wrong direction.
I just finished re-reading Dr. Heather Cox Richardson's "How the South Won the Civil War" and it reflects what is in this essay. She goes era by era describing how we have missed our aspirations in favor of the paradox- freedom for white Christians that means lack of freedom for others. I am also watching "The Gray House" about a southern family involved in the underground railroad and spying on Jefferson Davis and other southerners for the north. In one scene the Confederate Secretary of War explains that although perhaps Blacks will someday be free, the government has to protect property, and they are property. We are hurtling back to the a very racist time.
As a point of order, the election of 1876 did not end in an Electoral College tie, and it was not resolved in the House. It ended with 184 electoral votes for Tilden (one short of a majority),165 for Hayes, and 20, from four states, disputed. Congress created a special commission to decide how to apportion the disputed votes. The commission was supposed to be 7 Republicans, 7 Democrats, and one independent, but the tl;dr version is that it ended up with an 8-7 Republican majority, and all 20 votes were awarded to Hayes by identical 8-7 votes.
Indeed. Andrew Johnson played a large role in undermining accountability. Capitalists and the people of the North were tired of the war, and cared little for the formerly enslaved, they resented the costs of Reconstruction. Political will evaporated. I fear the same thing will happen when our Trump nightmare comes to an end. There will be an initial push to hold Trump's enablers to account, but trials will grind for years and the public will lose interest, and the political class will seek a compromise in the interests of "healing" and "looking forward." I'm sure Trump's allies are aware of this likelihood. Powerful people are allergic to accountability.
I agree 100%! And Iām sure that is why Professor Bitecofer wrote this piece. We never hold to account those who attempt to subvert our Democratic Republic. We did it with the Compromise of 1877, we did it with Nixon, we did it with W and Cheney, and we did it with Trump and January 6th. We cannot do it again. As painful as it will be, we must hold Trump and his fascist cronies to account!
The same happened with Pres. Nixon. No accountability. It seems to be our pattern.
Excellent analysis! I grew up in Western North Carolina in the era of Segregation. By the time I started public school, integration had begun, at least in name.
In third grade, I was taught NC history in a textbook approved by the Daughters of the Confederacy. We learned about the āWilmington Race Riot,ā where a group of armed blacks threatened the city and were rightfully put down.
What we didnāt know and that virtually no one alive today knew, is that the story was a lie. The fact was that Josephus Daniels, former Secretary of the Navy and owner of the Raleigh News & Observer, together with the newspaperās co-owner, Julian Carr, engineered a coup dāetat of the duly elected Fusion (white Populist and black Republican) City Counsel of Wilmington, forcing them to resign at gun point.
Wilmington was the largest city in the state in 1898. Its population was majority black. The gang of white racists burned the newspaper and other black businesses, killed hundreds of black citizens, and drove out thousands of others.
They did the same thing in Goldsboro and Kinston. The militia of racist whites kept blacks from the polls all over the state, thereby installing as Governor, Charles B. Aycock and a majority white racist legislature that together installed Jim Crow throughout the state.
No one in North Carolina knew this real story until an intrepid staff reporter from the Charlotte Observer, Eric Frasier, wrote a three-part exposƩ on the Wilmington coup in 1998, the literal hundredth anniversary of the coup.
When I read it, my head exploded! The perpetrators of the outrage were able to subvert the narrative and whitewash history. They got away with it for 100 years!
Thereās much more to say about this, but Iām grateful to Eric Frasier that he had the determination and the courage to bring that sorry chapter of North Carolinaās history into the light.
Having attended Robert E. Lee High School in the 1970's and witnessed the refusal of the local school board to change the high school's name in the early 2020's, I can personally affirm that much has not changed, although I am now a frequent visitor to the South, not a resident. The most recent rush of Southern states to redistrict tells us all we need to know. Needless to say, I was not taught about the post Civil War period (Reconstruction and its aftermath) during my public schooling, although I certainly learned about "Northern aggression." It's now been 150 years since the dreadful presidential election of 1876 and we are still fighting the same battles in many ways. Where our nation would now be had the U.S. stayed the course and continued to ensure full black equality cannot be discerned in its totality, but the immediate aftermath of the Civil War provides a fairly decent picture of what was possible.
In 2016, the Electoral College tossed the election to Trump, despite Clinton's clear victory, and we have never been the same since. I continue to maintain hope that this national travesty will begin to be reversed in 2026 and the country will again move forward in the way that was initially envisioned after the Civil War and later after the Civil Rights movement. I believe the vast majority of the country is ready. This time, the traitors who have taken over our government must pay a substantial price.
I'd go back to Bush/Gore Florida 2000.
It led to Bush's "Patriot Act" that's changed the US forever.
https://www.aclu.org/end-mass-surveillance-under-the-patriot-act#:~:text=Just%2045%20days%20after%20the,The%20law%20amounted%20to%20an
I thought about that. I think you can look to the night that the Republican mob stopped the recount in Dade County Florida. Had they not done so, Gore might well have become President and we surely wouldnāt have gone into Iraq. So much has flowed from that moment, not the least of which is the make-up of the Supreme Court and the refusal to meaningfully address climate change.
Wonderful article, Rachel. Let's not forget the impact Plessy vs. Ferguson, 1896, added to the Confederacy victory. As scholar, activist, philosopher, and social critic Ambrose I. Lane so eloquently stated the Supreme Court's ruling on P v F legalized apartheid in the US. After the decision, monuments to the Confederate traitors were virtually mass produced, and enduring symbol of who was and is boss in the south. The recent court decision upholding the state of Alabama's right to deny representation of minority representation for minority districts is Jim Crow Law at its brutal level. Progress is not a given but must be fought for and defended every day.
No accountability = Freedom to continue
This time we have to hold them accountable. This is must reading.
Now, as then, lack of accountability has tragic consequences. In my town in Illinois - a "free" state - in a precursor event to the Civil War, the abolitionist minister and newspaper editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered by a mob, his printing press tossed into the Mississippi River. This strikes me as particularly relevant today, both for the racial animus and the attack on the press that published a disagreeable view. Continuing to tell the true stories is so important, though I increasingly fear we're moving in the wrong direction.
If only Merrick Garland - and Biden - had had a sense of history.
I just finished re-reading Dr. Heather Cox Richardson's "How the South Won the Civil War" and it reflects what is in this essay. She goes era by era describing how we have missed our aspirations in favor of the paradox- freedom for white Christians that means lack of freedom for others. I am also watching "The Gray House" about a southern family involved in the underground railroad and spying on Jefferson Davis and other southerners for the north. In one scene the Confederate Secretary of War explains that although perhaps Blacks will someday be free, the government has to protect property, and they are property. We are hurtling back to the a very racist time.
As a point of order, the election of 1876 did not end in an Electoral College tie, and it was not resolved in the House. It ended with 184 electoral votes for Tilden (one short of a majority),165 for Hayes, and 20, from four states, disputed. Congress created a special commission to decide how to apportion the disputed votes. The commission was supposed to be 7 Republicans, 7 Democrats, and one independent, but the tl;dr version is that it ended up with an 8-7 Republican majority, and all 20 votes were awarded to Hayes by identical 8-7 votes.