Today is a Sad Day in American History
Today April 24th, 1877 the Hayes Administration (Rutherford B. Hayes. 19th President) ordered the last federal troops out of the South after a post-Civil War occupation of over a decade. During that period (1865-1877), called Reconstruction, the United States Army sat on the Southern States and scrutinized every action of the state legislatures and southern people to ensure that blacks were transitioned into “a new birth freedom.”
With the passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865, slavery, America’s origin sin, will cease to be constitutionally protected. Blacks will have their natural rights affirmed in the 14th Amendment (1869). They will become citizens of the United States with rights of due process and equal protection of the laws. They will sit on juries, testify in court, hold public office, be voted into Congress as Congressmen and Senators, enter into contract and move and live where ever they want. The 15th Amendment (1870) will give Black men the right to vote. All these Amendments were passed by Republicans, the Party of Abraham Lincoln.
But once blue coated America Soldiers left the South, the national government no longer had means of directly protecting the lives, civil liberties and property of black Americans. Remember, that this nation, under God, had fought a 4 year war to reunite the Union and settle the question once and for all, as to whether or not “All men are created equal.”
That war will cost the North 350,000 lives. Altogether, two million boys will fight for the Union— 200,000 of them will be Black American Soldiers, who despite second class citizenship, will bleed and die to turn the words of our Declaration, our national credo, into a living reality. The Civil War will cost the life of Abraham Lincoln. And it will cost the lives of 40,000 “Negro” Union soldiers. It’s still hard for me to talk about even 164 years later. It hurts.
President Ulysses S. Grant (18th President 1869-1877), one of the least appreciate men in history, was a kind of adopted son of Lincoln. He looked up to the man, who was old enough to be his father. Grant did everything he could to carry into fruition the ideas of “The Great Emancipator”. During the Presidency of Andrew Johnson, the Ku Klux Klan (not always called that, sometimes the Knights of the White Camellia, etc.) began to raise its ugly head in many of the Southern States.
And Grant would have none of it.
In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant created the Justice Department and placed over it his Republican Attorney General, Amos Ackerman (you need to learn about this man—a forgotten hero, a former Confederate Officer who saw the light and then tore into the Klan.) An Enforcement Act, passed by Republicans was used to suppress terrorism and state sponsored racism. Today it is part of the United States Code:
42 USC 1983
Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, Suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress,
By the end of the Grant Administration thousands of Klan Members had been imprisoned or fined. The Klan was dead. And it would remain dead, until the Democrat Party re-assumed power under Presidents Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson.
But returning to this date in history, after the Union Army withdrew from the South, “Redeemer” governments (Racist Democrat state legislatures and governors) would begin a march toward a new “soft” slavery called Jim Crow. Lynching will increase. Outright murder will become commonplace and, of course, the Ku Klux Klan will re-emerge as the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party. The voting rights that had been “guaranteed” by the 15th Amendment will be suffocated by state government poll taxes, “literacy tests” and outright violence and intimidation. After the withdrawal of the Union Army almost all the rights that black Americans had won by the victory of the Civil War had been extinguished. The Democrat controlled former Confederate States will return to their racist roots.
The withdrawal of the Union Army marks the beginning of a second long night of darkness for Black America. Dawn will not return for 100 years. Another great man will have to die for the conviction that all men are created equal.
As a historian I can give all the political reasons why the Republican Party withdrew troops from the South. Some say it was an unholy agreement called the Compromise of 1877 (Read about it. Not all of it is true, but it touches on the facts close enough.) But to simplify the reasons, the Republican Party just grew tired. In fatigue, in the constant political warfare in Washington, fighting with the Southern States, fighting with those who desired to “get over the Civil War”, tired of the nagging sense that an occupying army and a republic are mutually exclusive, tired of a Supreme Court that just couldn’t find clear meaning in the Reconstruction Amendments, which are crystal clear—the Republican got tired, forgot why they had fought a war. In short, they lost their way.
Today our country is “piled high” with problems, with crises, with lawless rebellion against the civil power. There are paramilitary organizations working to disrupt the laws and ordered liberty on our streets and in our universities. There is an incessant propaganda offensive against the truth. .And there is a growing undisguised racism that the old party of Jefferson Davis is no longer hiding. (The bigotry of low expectations for blacks, the open denigration of whites are both vile racism. Indeed, identity politics is just the progressive repackaging of racism).
It is easy to grow tired, to forget what we are fighting for, what we must preserve. But we must not grow tired. The Constitution, the Reconstruction Amendments are worth fighting for. Equality and color-blindness under the laws is what this country is all about. Remember that identity politics is just more of the same old Democratic Party’s racism. We must not indulge fatigue. The consequences of failure are far, far too great to imagine.
This is what Abe said back in December 1862:
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. […] We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. […]. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. […] The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
Dr. Francis Fukuyama wrote a book about the “End of History”. He is all wrong. There is no end to history until the return of God in the Flesh. Until then, it is up to us to “nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
