tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/us-civil-war-15775/articlesUS Civil War – The Conversation2024-03-14T12:44:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222152024-03-14T12:44:55Z2024-03-14T12:44:55ZTrump nearly derailed democracy once − here’s what to watch out for in reelection campaign<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580558/original/file-20240307-22-g07jxw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C6390%2C4780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'We did win this election,' said then-President Donald Trump at the White House early on Nov. 4, 2020, on what was still election night.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-combination-of-pictures-created-on-november-04-2020-news-photo/1229450800?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elections are the bedrock of democracy, essential for choosing representatives and holding them accountable. </p>
<p>The U.S. is a flawed democracy. The Electoral College and the Senate make voters in less populous states far more influential than those in the more populous: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/how-fair-is-the-electoral-college/">Wyoming residents have almost four times the voting power of Californians</a>. </p>
<p>Ever since the Civil War, however, reforms have sought to remedy other flaws, ensuring that citizenship’s full benefits, including the right to vote, were provided to formerly enslaved people, women and Native Americans; establishing the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/369/186/">constitutional standard of one person, one vote</a>; and eliminating barriers to voting through the 1965 <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43626/15">Voting Rights Act</a>. </p>
<p>But the Supreme Court has, in recent years, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2012/12-96">narrowly construed the Voting Rights Act</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/18-422">limited courts’ ability to redress gerrymandering</a>, the drawing of voting districts to ensure one party wins. </p>
<p>The 2020 election revealed even more disturbing threats to democracy. As I explain in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/How-Autocrats-Seek-Power-Resistance-to-Trump-and-Trumpism/Abel/p/book/9781032625843">my book</a>, “How Autocrats Seek Power,” Donald Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 but refused to accept the results. He tried every trick in the book – and then some – to alter the outcome of this bedrock exercise in democracy.</p>
<p>A recent New York Times story reports that when it comes to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/trump-presidency-election-voters.html">Trump’s time in office and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election</a>, “voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics.” This, then, is a refresher about Trump’s handling of the election, both before and after Nov. 3, 2020.</p>
<p>Trump began with a classic autocrat’s strategy – casting doubt on elections in advance to lay the groundwork for challenging an unfavorable outcome.</p>
<p>Despite his efforts, Trump was unable to control or change the election results. And that was because of the work of others to stop him.</p>
<p>Here are four things Trump tried to do to flip the election in his favor – and examples of how he was stopped, both by individuals and democratic institutions.</p>
<p><strong>Anticipating defeat</strong> </p>
<p>Expecting to lose in November 2020, in part because of his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, <a href="https://time.com/5514115/trump-rampant-voter-fraud-texas/">Trump proclaimed that</a> “all over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant.” He called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/politics/trump-michigan-vote-by-mail.html">mail ballots “a very dangerous thing</a>.” Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and aide, declined to “commit one way or the other” about whether the election would be held in November, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/13/jared-kushner-election-delay-coronavirus/">because of the COVID pandemic</a>. No efforts to postpone the election ensued.</p>
<p>Trump warned that Russia and China would “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/us/politics/mail-in-voting-foreign-intervention.html">be able to forge ballots</a>,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/26/trumps-corruption-election-just-took-hit-theres-still-problem/">a myth echoed by Attorney General William Barr</a>. Trump illegally threatened to have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/trump-election-day-sheriffs/index.html">law enforcement officers at polling places</a>. He falsely asserted that Kamala Harris “doesn’t meet the requirements” for serving as vice president <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/trump-2020-election.html?searchResultPosition=3">because her parents were immigrants</a>. Asked if he would agree to a transition if he lost, he responded: “There won’t be a transfer, frankly. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/trump-power-transfer-2020-election.html">There’ll be a continuation</a>.” </p>
<p><strong>Threatening litigation</strong></p>
<p>Aware that polls showed Biden ahead by 8 percentage points, Trump declared, “As soon as that election is over, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/02/trump-lawyers-election-biden-pennsylvania/">we’re going in with our lawyers</a>,” and they did just that. Adviser Steve Bannon correctly predicted that on Election Night, “Trump’s gonna walk into the Oval (Office), tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/14/steve-bannon-leaked-audio-trump-jan-6-investigation/">Game over, suck on that</a>.’” </p>
<p>Trump followed the script, asserting at 2:30 am: “we did win this election. … <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/13/book-excerpt-i-alone-can-fix-it/">This is a major fraud in our nation</a>,” though the actual results weren’t clear until days later, when, on Nov. 7, the networks declared Biden had won.</p>
<p>Although many advisers said he had lost, Trump kept claiming fraud, repeating Rudy Giuliani’s false allegation that Dominion election machines had switched votes – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/us/politics/trump-jan-6-criminal-case.html;%20https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/us/politics/trump-meadows-republicans-congress-jan-6.html;%20https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe">a lie for which Fox News agreed to pay $787 million</a> to settle the defamation case brought by Dominion.</p>
<p><strong>Taking direct action</strong></p>
<p>Trump allies pressured state legislators to create false, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/06/fake-trump-electors-ga-told-shroud-plans-secrecy-email-shows/">“alternative” slates of electors</a> as a key strategy for overturning the election. Trump contemplated declaring an emergency, ordering the military to seize voting machines and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-justice-department-overturn-election/2021/01/22/b7f0b9fa-5d1c-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html">replacing the attorney general with a yes-man</a> who would pressure state legislatures to change their electoral votes. </p>
<p><strong>Encouraging violence</strong></p>
<p>Trump summoned supporters to protest the Jan. 6 certification by Congress, boasted it would be “wild,” and encouraged them to march on the Capitol and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/11/14/million-maga-march-dc-protests/">“fight like hell,” promising to accompany them</a>. Once they had attacked the Capitol, he delayed for four hours before asking them to stop.</p>
<p>Yet Trump’s efforts to overturn the election failed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large crowd of people with someone holding a sign that says 'Trump won the legal vote!'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580570/original/file-20240307-22-qqa3qk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of Trump supporters, fueled by his spurious claims of voter fraud, flooded the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, protesting Congress’ expected certification of Joe Biden’s White House victory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowds-of-people-gather-as-us-president-donald-trump-speaks-news-photo/1230451810?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Resisting Trump</h2>
<p>Trump claimed that voting by mail produced rampant fraud, but state legislatures let <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-elections-coronavirus-pandemic-election-2020-campaign-2016-f6b627a5576014a55a7252e542e46508">voters vote by mail or in drop boxes</a> because of the pandemic. Postal Service workers delivered those ballots despite actions taken by Trump’s postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, that made processing and delivery more difficult.</p>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-election-2020-ap-top-news-politics-us-news-dc647214b5fc91cc29e776d8f4a4accf">DeJoy denied any sabotage</a> in testimony before Congress. </p>
<p>Most state election officials, regardless of party, loyally did their jobs, resisting Trump’s pressure to falsify the outcome. Courts rejected all but one of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/2021/01/06/trumps-failed-efforts-overturn-election-numbers/4130307001/">Trump’s 62 lawsuits aimed at overturning the election</a>. Government lawyers refused to invoke the Insurrection Act and authorize the military to seize voting machines. The <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/12/19/trump-reportedly-asked-advisors-about-deploying-military-to-overturn-election/?sh=486535eece2b">military remained scrupulously apolitical</a>. And Vice President Mike Pence presided over the certification, in which 43 Republican senators and 75 Republican representatives joined all the Democrats to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-justice-department-overturn-election/2021/01/22/b7f0b9fa-5d1c-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html">declare Biden the winner</a>.</p>
<p>That experience contains invaluable lessons about what to expect in 2024 and how to defend the integrity of elections.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222215/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard L. Abel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results. But the work of others, from lawmakers to judges to regular citizens, stopped him. There are cautionary lessons in that for the 2024 election.Richard L. Abel, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2252122024-03-12T11:38:46Z2024-03-12T11:38:46ZThe ‘Curse of Ham’: how people of faith used a story in Genesis to justify slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580842/original/file-20240310-28-s4o2j8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C1587%2C1034&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Drunkenness of Noah' by Giovanni Bellini.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drunkenness_of_Noah_bellini.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to a <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/church-commissioners-england-warmly-welcomes-oversight-groups-report">report by an independent oversight committee</a> released in March 2024, the Church of England should pay £1bn in reparations – 10 times the previously set amount – to the descendants of slavery.</p>
<p>The report was the start of a “multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement”, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/04/church-of-england-told-to-boost-size-of-fund-to-address-legacy-of-slavery">said Justin Welby</a>, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion of about 85 million Christians.</p>
<p>His words summon the shocking spectacle of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Church of England owned vast plantations in the Caribbean, chiefly in Barbados, employing thousands of slaves. Slavery was thought to be entirely consistent with the Christian message of bringing the Gospel to the “savages”. The Christian leaders even branded “their” slaves “SPG” – the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.</p>
<h2>“Cursed be Canaan”</h2>
<p>The Anglican Church is not alone: all mainstream Christian denominations were deeply involved in the slave trade, as were the main branches of Islam.</p>
<p>How could this be possible? How had religions supposedly dedicated to propagating the word of a compassionate and loving God become so intricately involved in this “appalling evil”? The answer is rooted in a grotesque misuse of the very words of the Bible. Of the many ways that Christians have invoked the Bible to justify their actions, none has exceeded in cruelty and wilful ignorance their appropriation of the “Curse of Ham” to justify slavery.</p>
<p>Ham (no relation!) was the youngest son of the Biblical patriarch Noah. When Ham saw his father drunk and naked, Noah felt so humiliated that he put a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, condemning his descendants to perpetual slavery. Here is the moment, as told in Genesis 9:24-25 (New King James Version):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren’.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The making of a ‘slave race’</h2>
<p>Since the 15th century, religious leaders have cited the passage as the justification for the enslavement of <em>all</em> African people. For almost 500 years, priests taught their flocks that a Hebrew prophet had condemned millions of Africans to slavery <em>because</em> they were descended from Ham’s son Canaan. The curse of Ham thus formed the core religious justification for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The curse of Ham entered Islamic thought in the 7th century, as a result of the influence of Christianity, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Ham-Slavery-Christianity-Christians/dp/0691123705">medieval Muslim scholars drew on Noah’s curse in their work</a>, as the historian David M. Goldenberg has shown. The Koran, however, makes no mention of the curse and Muhummad’s Farewell Address <a href="https://theconversation.com/islams-anti-racist-message-from-the-7th-century-still-resonates-today-141575">rejects the superiority of white people over black people</a>.</p>
<p>According to this reading of Genesis, God had not only mandated slavery, he had also <em>predestined</em> black people as a “slave race”. In fact, some Christian leaders argued that it was in the Africans’ interests to be enslaved, because their captivity would hasten their conversion, purifying and redeeming their souls in readiness for Judgement Day.</p>
<p>By manacling and herding millions of Africans onto ships bound for the colonies, slave traders and their enabling church leaders and governments had persuaded themselves that they were guiding the “Negroes” out of darkness and into salvation.</p>
<p>The historian Katie Cannon <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20487919">described the process another way</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Drunk with power and driven by grand delusions, government officials and officers of slave-trading companies… succumbed to the lies and manipulations that their soul salvation depended on the ceaseless replication of systemic violence.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The justification for African slavery in America</h2>
<p>The first written use of the Curse of Ham to justify slavery appeared in the 15th century, when <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953315">Gomes Eanes de Zurara</a>, a Portuguese historian, wrote that the enchained Africans he’d seen were in such a wretched state “because of the curse which, after the Deluge, Noah laid upon [Ham]… that his race should be subject to all the other races of the world”.</p>
<p>In 1627, an English author and defender of the slave trade wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This curse to be a servant was laid, first upon a disobedient sonne Cham [Ham], and wee see to this day, that the Moores, Chams posteritie, are sold like slaves yet.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the American colonies the Curse of Ham served as <em>the</em> ideological justification for African slavery. The Puritan colonisers of the New World bought slaves in large numbers to turn Providence, Rhode Island, into a Christian “city on a hill”. All were deemed the progeny of Canaan.</p>
<p>The moral obscenity of slavery was the root cause of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Both sides enrolled God’s authority in their cause. In the south this involved a literal reading of the Curse of Ham. Sulphuric southern preachers thundered that Noah’s condemnation of Canaan had condemned all Africans to slavery. An “almost universal opinion in the Christian world” held that “the sufferings and the slavery of the Negro race were the consequence of the curse of Noah”, asserted <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Crummell">Alexander Crummell</a> (1819–1898), an African-American minister and Cambridge-educated academic, in 1862.</p>
<p>Benjamin M. Palmer (1818–1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans and Mississippi’s pre-eminent clergyman during the Civil War, raged in sermon after sermon that Noah’s curse was a prophetic blueprint of the destinies of the “white”, “black” and “red” races. While the white descendants of Shem and Japhet (Noah’s elder sons) would flourish and succeed, Palmer asserted that “[u]pon Ham was pronounced the doom of perpetual servitude…”.</p>
<h2>An important reference in the Civil War</h2>
<p>In the opening months of the Civil War, bigotry and rank superstition blanketed the south with a Biblical defence of slavery. Southern Catholics also eagerly cited the curse as a validation of slavery. On 21 August 1861, Bishop Augustus Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, declared in a pastoral letter, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/abs/though-their-skin-remains-brown-i-hope-their-souls-will-soon-be-white-slavery-french-missionaries-and-the-roman-catholic-priesthood-in-the-american-south-178918651/7E167009CBB9C2C2C41BAA756BA9D987">“On the occasion of the war of southern independence”</a>, that slavery was “the manifest will of God”, and that all Catholics must snatch “from the barbarity of their ferocious customs thousands of children of the race of Canaan”, the accursed progeny of Ham.</p>
<p>All this was Biblical balm to slave traders and owners who feared for the salvation of their souls. The religious justification of slavery erased those concerns.</p>
<p>Setting aside the theologians’ misuse of Genesis, even on its own terms the Curse of Ham made a vague and unpersuasive case for slavery. Nowhere in Genesis is there a curse on Africans or black-skinned people.</p>
<p>If slave traders needed an explicit Biblical endorsement of slavery, they might have turned to the New Testament, where we find Saint Peter telling slaves to “be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh”. Or Saint Paul, who urged slaves to “be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling”.</p>
<h2>Come abolitionism</h2>
<p>Abolitionists were not silent in the face of this grotesque rendering of Christendom’s most sacred text. In a <a href="https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/teagle/texts/frederick-douglass-fifth-of-july-speech-1852/">5 July 1852 speech</a>, Frederick Douglass, the great anti-slavery activist and politician who had himself escaped his “owner”, delivered this response to those who peddled the Curse of Ham from their pulpits:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[The] church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters… They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And all based on a misinterpretation of Genesis 9:24-25 by the pro-slavery “Divines”, who thus transformed their religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty. It was a sham and a lie, and anything but what Christianity was held to stand for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ham ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>For nearly 500 years, priests and imams justified slavery on the basis of a misunderstood passage of the Bible.Paul Ham, Lecturer in narrative history, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213962024-01-19T01:58:08Z2024-01-19T01:58:08ZTrump defends himself to the Supreme Court, saying he called ‘for peace, patriotism, respect for law and order’ on Jan. 6 and is not an insurrectionist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570080/original/file-20240118-23-m47epr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C0%2C5553%2C3718&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S Supreme Court will decide whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off the 2024 presidential ballot. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2024TrumpColoradoInsurrectionAmendment/4df6455230514c2b8f930927d90862af/photo?Query=Trump%20colorado%20ballot&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=268&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Filing late in the day to meet the Jan. 18, 2024, deadline, former President Donald <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-719/298125/20240118171750343_Trump%20v%20Anderson%20Petitioner%20Brief%20on%20the%20Merits.pdf">Trump submitted a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court</a> that asked the justices to overturn the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24233440-co-supreme-court-ruling-anderson-v-griswold">Colorado Supreme Court’s decision</a> to remove him from that state’s primary ballot. </p>
<p>Norma Anderson, a Republican and former Colorado state lawmaker, and several other plaintiffs had <a href="https://www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Anderson-v-Griswold_Verified-Petition_2023.09.06_01.pdf">filed suit in September 2023</a> to keep Trump off the 2024 Colorado ballots. The plaintiffs argued that Trump was disqualified from public office because his “efforts to overturn the 2020 election and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power were part of an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States.” Their arguments were based on <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-14/section-3/">Section 3 of the 14th Amendment</a> of the Constitution, which bans insurrectionists from holding public office.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24233440-co-supreme-court-ruling-anderson-v-griswold">Colorado Supreme Court issued its ruling</a> in the case, originally known as Anderson v. Griswold, on Dec. 19. The Colorado justices concluded that Trump was disqualified from holding the office of the president because of his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and they affirmed the trial court’s conclusion that Trump engaged in an insurrection. </p>
<p>“These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection,” <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24233440-co-supreme-court-ruling-anderson-v-griswold">the court majority wrote</a>. </p>
<p>Trump faces more than a dozen similar <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/07/trump-ballot-remove-14th-amendment-map">legal challenges to his candidacy in other states as well</a>, based on Section 3. Many complainants, jurists and constitutional law scholars argue that Trump is disqualified to hold office because he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S. based on his actions before, during and after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.</p>
<p>Trump appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices agreed to consider the case. In his Jan. 18 brief, Trump presented a range of arguments for why the Colorado decision was wrong. Chief among them: He claimed that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to the presidency and that he did not engage in an insurrection against the United States. </p>
<p>Describing his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump’s brief says “Calling for peace, patriotism, respect for law and order, and directing the Secretary of Defense to do what needs to be done to protect the American people is in no way inciting or participating in an ‘insurrection.’” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a dark winter coat standing on a stage outside in front of a lot of people, with many American flags behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570084/original/file-20240118-27-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Donald Trump speaks at the ‘Stop The Steal’ Rally on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-speaks-at-the-stop-the-steal-rally-news-photo/1294908917?adppopup=true">Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Officers and insurrections</h2>
<p>Trump’s brief attacks the Colorado Supreme Court’s “dubious interpretation of (S)ection 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.” He argues that Section 3 does not apply to the presidency because the “President is not an ‘officer of the United States.’” Trump points to <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript">other parts of the Constitution</a> that use the term “Officer,” and he argues that an “Officer of the United States” only includes political appointees, such as the Secretary of State, and not anyone who is elected to an office. </p>
<p>There is merit to this argument, but Trump confuses the original intent of the Framers, when the Constitution was initially ratified, with the intent of the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/drafting-table-mobile/item/amendment-xiv">39th Congress that drafted the 14th Amendment</a> decades after the nation’s founding. Several constitutional law scholars argue that the 39th Congress did intend for Section 3 <a href="https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/221946/02%20Magliocca.pdf">to apply to the presidency</a> because congressional records highlight senators’ and representatives’ specific comments that it should.</p>
<p>Whether Section 3 applies to the presidency is likely the first question that the Supreme Court will have to answer. While Trump also claims that he did not engage in an insurrection, the justices likely will not consider whether he did or not because the court generally does not disturb the factual conclusions of trial courts. </p>
<p>But the justices may have to consider the other legal questions that Trump raises. Trump argues that even if Section 3 applies to the presidency, it cannot be enforced because Congress has not passed a law to enforce it. But <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=3946576">as a constitutional law scholar</a>, I believe that perhaps his strongest argument and the justices’ easiest legal question to answer turns to the plain text of Section 3, which states that it bars insurrectionists and rebels from holding office. It does not say anything about running for office.</p>
<h2>Bullets, not ballots</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fourteenth-Amendment">The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868</a>, is considered a “<a href="https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/reconstruction-amendments-official-documents-social-history">Reconstruction Amendment</a>,” along with the 13th and 15th amendments. Congress and state legislatures ratified the Reconstruction Amendments in the years immediately following the end of the Civil War. Within that context, the drafters of the Reconstruction Amendments sought, among many things, to prevent Confederates from <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-14th-amendment-bars-trump-from-office-a-constitutional-law-scholar-explains-principle-behind-colorado-supreme-court-ruling-219763">serving in public office following their unsuccessful rebellion</a> against the Union. </p>
<p>Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>With 15 commas, the meaning and application of Section 3 may confuse many readers. Constitutional law scholar Mark Graber provided a thorough discussion of each sentence fragment and clause in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-14th-amendment-bars-trump-from-office-a-constitutional-law-scholar-explains-principle-behind-colorado-supreme-court-ruling-219763">recent article for The Conversation</a>. In his summary of this section of the 14th Amendment, he says “These words in the amendment declare that those who turn to bullets when ballots fail to provide their desired result cannot be trusted as democratic officials.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A page from a legal document filed 'In the Supreme Court of the United States'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570081/original/file-20240118-21-uh5p2k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from the appeal by former President Donald Trump asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2024TrumpColoradoInsurrectionAmendment/f1e2b09db9de4b658048c40c6627b9cf/photo?Query=Trump%20colorado%20ballot&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=268&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Jon Elswick</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Settling the unsettled</h2>
<p>The Supreme Court agreed to consider Trump’s appeal in early January 2024 because whether Trump is constitutionally qualified to serve as the president of the United States again is a critical question in an area of law that is not settled. While the Supreme Court <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10569">considered some general cases of insurrection and rebellion</a> following the Civil War, the Supreme Court has never faced this specific question regarding Section 3.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court will consider whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering the former president excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot.</p>
<p>But this specific question also presents a number of related legal questions that the Supreme Court could also decide, ranging from whether Section 3 applies to the presidency to whether Section 3 only prohibits a candidate from serving in office as opposed to appearing on any ballot. Then, of course, there is the factual issue as to whether the former president “engaged in an insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23-719.html">Trump v. Anderson on Feb. 8, 2024</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221396/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>No conflicts.</span></em></p>The first shoe has dropped in the Supreme Court’s process of considering whether Donald Trump is eligible to be president.Wayne Unger, Assistant Professor of Law, Quinnipiac UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206432024-01-06T20:43:09Z2024-01-06T20:43:09ZUS Supreme Court decision on Trump-Colorado ballot case ‘monumental’ for democracy itself, not just 2024 presidential election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568098/original/file-20240106-17-wrjvyv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=83%2C17%2C3910%2C2640&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. Supreme Court.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-u-s-supreme-court-stands-on-december-11-2020-in-news-photo/1230073841?adppopup=true">Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Momentous questions for the U.S. Supreme Court and momentous consequences for the country are likely now that the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010524zr2_886b.pdf">court has announced it will decide</a> whether former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump is eligible to appear on the Colorado ballot.</em> </p>
<p><em>The court’s decision to consider the issue comes in the wake of <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf">Colorado’s highest court ruling</a> that Trump had engaged in insurrection and therefore was barred from appearing on the state’s GOP primary ballot by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. <a href="https://www.maine.gov/sos/news/2023/Decision%20in%20Challenge%20to%20Trump%20Presidential%20Primary%20Petitions.pdf">Maine’s secretary of state also barred Trump</a> from the state’s primary ballot, and more than a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/28/here-are-key-states-where-trumps-ballot-status-is-being-challenged/">dozen other states are considering similar moves</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The Conversation’s senior politics and democracy editor, Naomi Schalit, spoke with Notre Dame election law scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PSynZNoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Derek Muller</a> about the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case, which will rest on the court’s interpretation of a post Civil War-era amendment aimed at keeping those who “<a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/#amendment-14-section-3">engaged in insurrection or rebellion</a>” from serving in political office.</em></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A blue sign with white printing that says 'Trump 2024.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568099/original/file-20240106-15-znwys7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Trump be able to stay on the ballot in 2024?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/signs-supporting-republican-presidential-candidate-former-u-news-photo/1692356195?adppopup=true">Scott Olson/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>On a scale of 1 to 10, how big is this?</strong></p>
<p>In terms of potential impact, it’s a 10. It is excluding a former president from appearing on the ballot for engaging in insurrection. </p>
<p>That’s monumental for several reasons. It’s <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10569">the first major and material use of this provision</a> of the Constitution since the Civil War. It’s the first time it has kept a presidential candidate off the ballot, much less a former one and the apparent front-runner for the Republican Party nomination.</p>
<p>But on the flip side, what are the odds of that actually happening? That’s more speculative. And so the number is probably less than 10. This was an extraordinary major decision from the Colorado Supreme Court. But you have to temper that by saying, well, there’s a chance it gets reversed, and then Trump appears on the ballot and this mostly goes away. </p>
<p><strong>What are the risks here for the court? Legal scholar Michael W. McConnell at Stanford <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/05/supreme-court-trump-colorado-ballot-insurrection/">said in The Washington Post</a>, “There is no way they can decide the case without having about half the country think they are being partisan hacks.”</strong></p>
<p>This is a binary choice that either empowers the Republican candidate or prevents voters from choosing him. So when you have a choice in such stark, political and partisan terms, whatever the Supreme Court is doing is often going to be viewed through that lens by many voters. </p>
<p>I think it’s a reason why there will be as much effort as possible internally on the court to reach a consensus view to avoid that appearance of partisanship on the court, that appearance of division on the court. If there’s consensus, it’s harder for the public to sort of point the finger at one side or another. </p>
<p>That’s much easier said than done. The court decides questions with major political consequences all the time. But to decide the questions in the context of an upcoming election feels different.</p>
<p><strong>The justices <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-trump-plea-to-remain-on-colorado-ballot/">granted only Trump’s appeal</a> to consider the case, not the Colorado Republican Party’s. Is this significant, and if so, how?</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294416/20231227184621636_Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition%20PDFA.pdf">Colorado Republican Party</a> and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24253189-trump-v-anderson-2024-01-03-petition-for-writ-of-certiorari">the Trump campaign</a> were on two different tracks in their appeals. When you grant both cases, you invite two sets of attorneys and parties to participate and add complexity. I think the decision to grant only Trump’s case is a decision to make this as streamlined a process as possible. </p>
<p><strong>Will whatever decision the court makes put to rest the ballot access questions in all the other states?</strong></p>
<p>There are a couple of very narrow grounds the court might rule on. For example, they might say, we’re not ready to hear this case because it’s only a primary, or Colorado so abused its own state procedures as to run afoul of federal constitutional rules. Those would be kind of rulings <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-barred-from-colorado-ballot-now-what-220273">only applicable to the Colorado case or only applicable in the primaries</a>. </p>
<p>There’s a chance the court does this, but my sense – not to speculate too much – is that’s going to be deeply unsatisfying for the court, knowing that if they delay in this case, another case is likely coming later in the summer where these questions will have to be addressed in August or September. That’s much closer to the general election. Those are months when the court is in recess, and they would have to come back from their summer vacation early. So my sense is that the court will try to resolve these on a comprehensive basis. They’ve scheduled oral argument on Feb. 8, 2024 so they want to move on as quickly as possible to put this to rest.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A legal document in which former President Donald Trump asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Colorado Supreme Court's decision." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568103/original/file-20240106-21-g12xmx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from the appeal by former President Donald Trump asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2024TrumpColoradoInsurrectionAmendment/f1e2b09db9de4b658048c40c6627b9cf/photo?Query=Trump%20ballot&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1401&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Jon Elswick</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>You submitted an amicus brief in the Colorado case for neither side. What was it you wanted to tell the court?</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2999/Muller_Amicus_Colorado.pdf?1704560255">I raised two general points</a> and then one specific to Colorado. The two general points are that I think states have the power to judge the <a href="https://www.usa.gov/requirements-for-presidential-candidates">qualifications of presidential candidates</a> and keep them off the ballot. And states have done that over the years to say if you were born in Nicaragua, or you’re 27 years old, we’re going to keep you off the ballot. </p>
<p>But I also say states have no obligation to do that. You can look throughout history, going back to the 1890s, where ineligible candidates’ names have been printed and put on the ballot. And this isn’t a question of whether or not the state wants to do it – they have the flexibility to do it. So I wanted to set those two framing questions up so the court doesn’t veer too much in one direction or the other to say “states have no power” or “of course states have power regardless of what the legislature has asked them to do.” </p>
<p>The point specific to Colorado is I doubted there was jurisdiction in Colorado for the state Supreme Court to hear this case, but the court disagreed with me.</p>
<p><strong>What could happen during the period between now and the court’s decision that could be consequential?</strong></p>
<p>More states are going to consider these challenges as the ballot deadlines approach. And we know that there’s Super Tuesday the first Tuesday of March when a significant number of states hold presidential primaries. So I think there’s a lot of uncertainty in the next six weeks about which states might exclude him. </p>
<p>On top of that is voter uncertainty. Voters are making their decisions and weighing the trade-offs of who to vote for. Right now, this is a cloud hanging over the Trump campaign. It’s not just that he’s been declared ineligible in Colorado and Maine. It’s the question in other states for other voters: Am I wasting my vote, is this actually an ineligible candidate? Should I be voting for somebody else? </p>
<p>That’s not an enviable position for voters to be in – that they might cast their ballots only to find out later that they’re not going to be counted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I filed an amicus brief on my own behalf in support of neither party in the Colorado Supreme Court.</span></em></p>The US Supreme Court faces a case with huge repercussions for the 2024 presidential election – and American democracy. An election law scholar explains why.Derek T. Muller, Professor of Law, University of Notre DameLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157882023-11-17T13:28:21Z2023-11-17T13:28:21ZGettysburg tells the story of more than a battle − the military park shows what national ‘reconciliation’ looked like for decades after the Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559749/original/file-20231115-27-2eve7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C1024%2C662&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The North Carolina memorial stands in Gettysburg National Military Park on Aug. 10, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-north-carolina-memorial-stands-along-west-confederate-news-photo/1227989668?adppopup=true">Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to dedicate a cemetery at the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Four months before, about 50,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or captured at <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/gettysburg">the Battle of Gettysburg</a>, later seen as a turning point in the war.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.24404500/?st=text">his now-famous address</a>, Lincoln described the site as “a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that (their) nation might live,” and called on “us the living” to finish their work. In the 160 years since, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/confederate-monuments.htm#:%7E:text=There%20are%201%2C328%20monuments%2C%20memorials,by%20different%20generations%20of%20Americans.">1,328 monuments and memorials</a> have been erected at Gettysburg National Military Park – including one for each of the 11 Confederate states.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of a crowd of men in coats and stovepipe hats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559432/original/file-20231114-29-230qxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abraham Lincoln, seated at center, before delivering the Gettysburg Address.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-abraham-lincoln-arrives-at-gettysburg-in-news-photo/172829090?adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Confederate memorials in the American South have attracted scrutiny for years. In October 2023, a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lee-statue-charlottesville-melt-aac4792236a680465776c0f2788343cd">was melted down</a> in Charlottesville, Virginia, six years after plans to remove it spurred the violent “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1116942725/the-charlottesville-rally-5-years-later-its-what-youre-still-trying-to-forget">Unite the Right” rally</a>.</p>
<p>Gettysburg has received relatively little attention, yet it occupies a unique space in these debates. The battlefield is one of the most hallowed historic sites in the country, and, unlike other areas with memorials to Confederate soldiers, is located in the North. The military park’s history offers a window into the United States’ attitude toward postwar reconciliation – one often willing <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008199&content=reviews">to overlook racial equality</a> in the name of national and political unity.</p>
<h2>The ‘Mecca of Reconciliation’</h2>
<p>Today, Gettysburg <a href="https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/news/presskit.htm">draws nearly a million visitors</a> each year. In addition to visiting the museum, visitors can drive or walk among the monuments and plaques that cover the landscape, dedicated to both Union and Confederate troops. There are markers that explain the events of the battle, as well as monuments dedicated to individual people, military units and states. </p>
<p>As with any war memorial, particularly for a civil war, Gettysburg commemorates an event whose survivors held dramatically different views of its meaning. In his book “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjk2tsw">Race and Reunion</a>,” historian <a href="https://history.yale.edu/people/david-blight">David Blight</a> identifies three main narratives of the Civil War. One emphasizes the “nobility of the Confederate soldier” and cause, while another focuses on the emancipation of slaves. The third is the “reconciliationist” view, with the notion that “<a href="https://utpress.org/title/on-a-great-battlefield-3/">all in the war were brave and true</a>,” regardless of which side they fought for.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://experts.okstate.edu/rebecca.sheehan">cultural geographers</a> who study <a href="https://geography.utk.edu/people/instructional-faculty/stack-katrina/">commemorative landscapes</a>, with a focus on issues of race and memory. In our view, Gettysburg is a prime example of that reconciliation narrative: a site that aims to reconcile the North and the South more than it addresses the racial motivations of the conflict. The park’s own <a href="https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/gett/adhi.pdf">administrative history</a> refers to Gettysburg as an “American Mecca of Reconciliation.” </p>
<h2>No praise, no blame</h2>
<p>From 1864 until 1895, the battlefield was under the administration of <a href="https://digital.libraries.psu.edu/digital/collection/digitalbks1/id/26360">the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association</a>, which placed markers <a href="http://npshistory.com/publications/gett/mon-locations-1932.pdf">along military units’ battle lines</a>.</p>
<p>Starting in 1890, the U.S. War Department began actively preserving Civil War battlefields. Congress approved the creation of a commission of Union and Confederate veterans to mark the armies’ positions at Gettysburg with tablets that each bore “a brief historical legend, compiled without praise and without censure.” These policies were also included in the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/46029361/">Regulations for the National Military Parks</a>, published in 1915.</p>
<p>This guiding idea – “without praise and without censure” – was also evident at ceremonies for the battle’s 50th anniversary in 1913. Reconciliation was central in speeches <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2018652225/">and formal photographs</a>, many featuring elderly veterans from both sides shaking hands.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two rows of elderly men in suits -- one row in black, the other in light-colored fabric -- shaking hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559416/original/file-20231114-27-zna8kl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Union and Confederate veterans pictured at 50th anniversary events in Gettysburg, Pa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.56469/">Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs/Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time, there were no monuments to Confederate states; most markers, both for Union and Confederate troops, were for individual battle units.</p>
<h2>State memorials</h2>
<p>In 1912, the Virginia Gettysburg Commission had submitted plans for an equestrian statue of General Lee and other figures, with an inscription saying the state’s sons “fought for the faith of their fathers.” The chairman of the Gettysburg National Park Commission, however, had warned that such a statue <a href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=6912750&id=7f5b0055-39e0-4037-8fa3-b5a94b63947c&gid=37C201BC-2908-42D8-B394-5A5A9B32F667">would likely not be approved</a> by the War Department because “inscriptions should be without ‘censure, praise or blame.‘” The chairman said that while “they fought for the faith of their fathers” might be true for Virginians, “it certainly opens the inscription to not a little adverse criticism.”</p>
<p>Eventually, the state commission agreed to inscribe simply, “Virginia to her sons at Gettysburg” – creating the first Confederate state monument.</p>
<p>But enforcement of the no praise, no blame policy was uneven.</p>
<p>Efforts to erect a monument for Mississippi, for example, began in the early 1960s. The state commission’s <a href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=7187877&id=674910dc-88c9-47e0-83d6-57e1c9008875&gid=C7C5DDAF-803B-444F-9968-681A0AE04756">intended inscription</a> read:</p>
<blockquote>On this ground our brave sires fought for their righteous cause<br>
Here, in glory, sleep those who gave to it their lives<br>
To valor they gave new dimensions of courage<br>
To duty, its noblest fulfillment<br>
To posterity, the sacred heritage of honor.</blockquote>
<p>The park superintendent <a href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=7187877&id=c4caf4eb-8832-4fa8-b1b6-ff49ef690bff&gid=C7C5DDAF-803B-444F-9968-681A0AE04756">pointed to two objections</a>, however: first to the use of “righteous” and second to “here,” since Southern soldiers’ bodies <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_cemeteries/pennsylvania/gettysburg_national_cemetery.html">were mostly relocated</a> after the battle.</p>
<p>Mississippi Supreme Court Judge Thomas Brady, who collaborated on the inscription, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=7187877&id=f54f4132-8e05-401d-88d6-7c9f06f21f1f&gid=C7C5DDAF-803B-444F-9968-681A0AE04756">wrote to the monument commission</a> expressing his frustration over the objection to the “righteous cause” language. Even the “South’s most bitter critics … never questioned that the South felt that its cause was righteous,” he noted.</p>
<p>“The South has had the most to forgive in this matter and the South has forgiven,” Brady wrote. “Let us hope that the North has done likewise.”</p>
<p>In late 1970, a new superintendent was put in place at Gettysburg. Mississippi’s commission asked him <a href="https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery-item.htm?pg=7187877&id=6a1949e0-0dff-4aab-9143-0f01fc9c65b2&gid=C7C5DDAF-803B-444F-9968-681A0AE04756">to revisit the “righteous cause” wording</a> – and expressed “genuine pleasure” that the new superintendent was a fellow Mississippian.</p>
<p>The monument was dedicated in 1973, with the “righteous cause” language included in its inscription. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two side-by-side photos of a statue on a pedestal, showing one man swinging a rifle as he steps over the other one." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556438/original/file-20231029-15-dpwt7w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mississippi state monument at Gettysburg today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Katrina Stack Finkelstein</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Unfinished work’</h2>
<p>From the start, the policies for monuments at Gettysburg called for a commemorative landscape that would recall the actions of those who fought and died on the battlefield. In reality, <a href="https://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/confederate-monuments/confederate-state-monuments/south-carolina/">several monuments</a> scattered over the landscape <a href="https://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/confederate-monuments/confederate-state-monuments/louisiana/">perpetuate the Lost Cause myth</a>, which argues that the Confederate states’ chief goal was simply to protect the sanctity of state rights – whitewashing the atrocities of slavery and romanticizing the antebellum South.</p>
<p>In recent decades, however, the park has begun to do more <a href="https://kevinmlevin.substack.com/p/interpreting-confederate-slaves-on">to emphasize slavery</a> in <a href="https://www.npca.org/articles/3557-a-more-complete-story-at-gettysburg">its historical exhibits and descriptions</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/commemorative-works.htm">National Park management policy</a> treats commemorative works as historic features reflecting “the knowledge, attitudes, and tastes of the persons who designed and placed them.” As a result, the monuments cannot be “altered, relocated, obscured, or removed, even when they are deemed inaccurate or incompatible with prevailing present-day values.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/confederate-monuments.htm">Gettysburg website</a> notes that legislation and compliance with <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/real-estate/historic-preservation/historic-preservation-policy-tools/legislation-policy-and-reports/section-106-of-the-national-historic-preservation-act#:%7E:text=Section%20106%20of%20the%20NHPA,when%20making%20final%20project%20decisions.">federal laws</a> would be required to move many monuments.</p>
<p>When Lincoln <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.24404500/?st=text">traveled to Gettysburg</a>, he called for Americans to dedicate themselves “to the unfinished work” of the Union dead, and to dedicate a portion of the battlefield to their memory. A century and a half later, however, the site also illustrates a messy postwar debate: the U.S.’s struggle to reconcile sharply opposed understandings of the Civil War. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct information about casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How should opposing armies be commemorated on a battlefield? Gettysburg offers an especially interesting example of today’s debates over Confederate monuments.Katrina Stack, PhD Student, University of TennesseeRebecca Sheehan, Professor of Geography, Oklahoma State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116522023-08-18T12:38:34Z2023-08-18T12:38:34ZGeorgia indictment and post-Civil War history make it clear: Trump’s actions have already disqualified him from the presidency<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543344/original/file-20230817-17-pfm7di.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C24%2C8192%2C5420&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump may be barred from holding public office due to a constitutional amendment disqualifying those who have taken part in 'insurrection or rebellion.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-president-donald-trump-looks-on-during-the-pro-am-news-photo/1605522075?adppopup=true">Mike Stobe/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After three indictments of former President Donald Trump, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-georgia-election-investigation-grand-jury-willis-d39562cedfc60d64948708de1b011ed3">the fourth one in Georgia</a> came not as a surprise but as a powerful exposition of the scope of Trump’s efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election.</p>
<p>New <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751">conservative legal scholarship</a> spells out how and why those actions – which were observed by the public over many months – disqualify Trump from serving in the presidency ever again. And our read of the Georgia indictment, <a href="https://www.luc.edu/law/faculty/facultyandadministrationprofiles/ferguson-joseph.shtml">as longtime</a> <a href="https://www.luc.edu/law/faculty/facultyandadministrationprofiles/durkin-thomas.shtml">lawyers ourselves</a>, shows why and how that disqualification can be put into effect.</p>
<p>The key to all of this is the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment">14th Amendment to the Constitution</a>, which states that “No person shall … hold any office, under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Trump took that oath at his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017.</p>
<p>Both Trump’s Georgia indictment, and his federal indictment in Washington, D.C., cite largely public information – and some newly unearthed material – to spell out exactly how he engaged in efforts to rebel against the Constitution, and sought and gave aid and comfort to others who also did so.</p>
<p>Legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/trump-jan-6-insurrection-conservatives.html">conservatives themselves and members of the conservative Federalist Society</a>, have recently published a paper declaring that under the 14th Amendment, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751">Trump’s actions render him ineligible to hold office</a>. </p>
<p>We believe the Georgia indictment provides even more detail than the earlier federal one about how Trump’s actions have already disqualified him from office, and shows a way to keep him off the ballot in 2024.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a dark jacket standing at a lectern that bears a seal that says 'District Attorney' across the top." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543321/original/file-20230817-19-cs4pru.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, center, during a news conference, Aug. 14, 2023, in Atlanta, after the release of her indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GeorgiaElectionInvestigation/bc69a90009144346b39126bfd0c10cc0/photo?Query=Fani%20Willis&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=now-30d&totalCount=22&currentItemNo=13">AP Photo/John Bazemore</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Disqualification is automatic</h2>
<p>Trump’s supporters might argue that disqualifying him would be unfair without a trial and conviction on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/01/us/politics/trump-jan-6-indictment-2020-election-annotated.html">Jan. 6 indictment</a>, and perhaps the Georgia charges.</p>
<p>But Baude and Paulsen, using <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/white-papers/on-originalism-in-constitutional-interpretation#:%7E:text=Originalism%20is%20a%20theory%20of,time%20that%20it%20became%20law.">originalist interpretation</a> – the interpretive theory of choice of the powerful Federalist Society and Trump’s conservative court appointees, which gives full <a href="https://fedsoc.org/federalist-society-review-new/originalism-in-a-nutshell">meaning to the actual, original text</a> of the Constitution – demonstrate that no legal proceeding is required. They say disqualification is automatic, or what’s known in the legal world as “self-executing.” </p>
<p>Recent public comments from <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/under-14th-amendment-trump-doesnt-030240893.html">liberal constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe</a> and conservative jurist and former federal judge Michael Luttig – who has characterized the events before, during and since Jan. 6 as Trump’s <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/conservative-retired-judge-says-trump-corroded-and-corrupted-american-democracy">“declared war on American democracy”</a> – suggest an emerging bipartisan consensus supporting Baude and Paulsen. </p>
<h2>Backed by history</h2>
<p>This is not a theoretical bit of technical law. <a href="https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=087089099092100125002019124001115005018043040037001065095010010113091109108026088067002010036056019123016098109000090102077021104087070023007099031023071031021099004020076113014125085119124125071125107091111102094011126007081093068022005077076106098&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE">This provision of the 14th Amendment</a> was, in fact, extensively used after the Civil War to <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/14th-amendment.htm#:%7E:text=It%20banned%20those%20who%20%E2%80%9Cengaged,of%20the%20House%20and%20Senate.">keep former Confederate leaders from serving</a> in the federal government, without being tried or convicted of any crime. </p>
<p><a href="https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2020/07/11/were-confederate-soldiers-tried-for-treason/">Few former Confederates were charged with crimes</a> associated with secession, rebellion and open war against the United States. And most were pardoned by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1865/05/30/archives/president-johnsons-amnesty-proclamation-restoration-to-rights-of.html">sweeping orders</a> <a href="https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/149">issued by President Andrew Johnson</a>. </p>
<p>But even though they had no relevant convictions, former Confederates were in fact barred from office in the U.S. </p>
<p>In December 1865, several who had neither been convicted nor been pardoned tried to claim seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. But the House clerk <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/confederates-blocked-from-congress/">refused to swear them in</a>. It took an act of Congress – <a href="https://heritagelib.org/amnesty-act-of-1872">the 1872 Amnesty Act – </a> to later restore their office-holding rights.</p>
<p>There is no requirement in the Constitution that the disqualification be imposed <a href="https://electionlawblog.org/?p=138047">by any specific process</a> – only that it applies to people who take certain actions against the Constitution.</p>
<h2>A path through the states</h2>
<p>For the U.S. in 2023, we believe the most realistic avenue to enforce the 14th Amendment’s ban on a second Trump presidency is through state election authorities. That’s where the Georgia indictment comes in.</p>
<p>State election officials could themselves, or in response to a petition of a citizen of that state, refuse Trump a place on the 2024 ballot because of the automatic 14th Amendment disqualification. </p>
<p>Trump would certainly challenge the move in federal court. But the recent disqualification proceedings against <a href="https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/second-loss-for-madison-cawthorn-4th-circuit-revives-claim-that-he-is-insurrectionist-unfit-for-office">former North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn</a> provides <a href="https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/221251.p.pdf">a road map and binding legal precedent</a> affirming the 14th Amendment as a valid legal ground for disqualification of a candidate for federal office.</p>
<p>The Georgia indictment against Trump and allies exhaustively details extensive <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/14/indictment-document-trump-georgia/">acts of lying, manipulation and threats</a> against Georgia officials, as well as a fraudulent fake elector scheme to illegally subvert the legitimate 2020 Georgia presidential vote tally and <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/665036274/Trump-Indictment-Georgia-081423#">resulting elector certification</a>.</p>
<p>Trump’s failure to accomplish what is tantamount to a coup in Georgia and other swing states <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/indictment-document-trump-jan-6-pdf/">set the stage for the violent insurrection</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/">of Jan. 6, 2021</a>, that sought to achieve the same result – Trump’s fraudulent installation to a second term. </p>
<figure class="align-Center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sample ballot from Georgia in 2020, which includes the names of candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543335/original/file-20230817-44496-65q9rt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The top of a sample Georgia ballot from 2020 – will Trump be able to get on the 2024 ballot?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dekalbcountyga.gov/sites/default/files/users/user304/2020-11-03%20Composite%20Sample%20Ballot%20rev%203.pdf">DeKalb County, Georgia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, the Georgia scheme is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/indictment-document-trump-jan-6-pdf/">included in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment</a> as one of the methods and means in “aid” of the larger Jan. 6 federal conspiracy against the United States. </p>
<p><a href="https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=087089099092100125002019124001115005018043040037001065095010010113091109108026088067002010036056019123016098109000090102077021104087070023007099031023071031021099004020076113014125085119124125071125107091111102094011126007081093068022005077076106098&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE">Baude and Paulsen acknowledge</a> that “insurrection and rebellion” are traditionally associated with forced or violent opposition. But we see the broader set of actions by Trump and his allies to subvert the Constitution – the Georgia vote count and fake elector scheme included – as part of a political coup d'etat. It was a rebellion. </p>
<h2>Georgia as a bellwether</h2>
<p>So what makes the Georgia scheme and indictment compelling for purposes of disqualifying Trump from the 2024 Georgia ballot? </p>
<p>There are minimally six aspects <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/14/indictment-document-trump-georgia/">revealed in the latest indictment</a> that we believe justify Georgia – under Section 3 of the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment – keeping Trump off the ballot:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The racketeering scheme was a multifaceted attempt to subvert Georgia’s own part of the 2020 electoral process; </p></li>
<li><p>The officials on the receiving end of the unsuccessful racketeering scheme were elected and appointed Georgia officials. … </p></li>
<li><p>… whose actions to reject election subversion vindicated their own oaths to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States as well as Georgia’s; </p></li>
<li><p>Most of these officials were and are Republicans – including Secretary of State <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/brad-raffenspergers-two-sentence-response-trump-indictment-1819945">Brad Raffensberger</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/08/16/1194171929/donald-trump-georgia-indictment-brian-kemp-republicans#:%7E:text=Kemp%20also%20testified%20under%20subpoena,against%20Trump%20and%2018%20others.">Governor Brian Kemp</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4152605-georgia-lieutenant-governor-describes-testimony-to-fulton-county-grand-jury-as-very-serious/">former Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan</a>; </p></li>
<li><p>These officials will, in 2024 as in 2020, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Electoral_systems_in_Georgia">collectively determine who is qualified</a> to be on Georgia’s presidential ballot; and </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/16/us/politics/trumps-indictment-georgia-2024.html">These officials’ testimony</a>, and related evidence, is at the heart of the proof of the Georgia racketeering case against Trump. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>In other words, the evidence to convict Trump in the Georgia racketeering case is the same evidence, coming from the same Georgia officials, who will be involved in determining whether, under the 14th Amendment, Trump is qualified to be on the 2024 presidential ballot – or not. </p>
<p>Little if any additional evidence or proceedings are needed. The Georgia officials already hold that evidence, because much of it comes from them. They don’t need a trial to establish what they already know. </p>
<p>How could Trump avoid this happening? A quick trial date in Atlanta with an acquittal on all counts might do it, but this runs counter to his strategy to delay all the pending criminal cases until after the 2024 election. </p>
<p>With no preelection trial, there will likely be no Trump on the 2024 Georgia ballot, and no chance for him to win Georgia’s 2024 electoral college votes. </p>
<p>Once Georgia bars him, other states may follow. That would leave Trump with no way to credibly appear on the ballot in all 50 states, giving him no chance to win the electoral votes required to claim the White House.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>US law actually bars former President Donald Trump from holding office ever again. The recent Georgia indictment of Trump helps make the case.Joseph Ferguson, Co-Director, National Security and Civil Rights Program, Loyola University ChicagoThomas A. Durkin, Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Loyola University ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082752023-08-08T12:28:52Z2023-08-08T12:28:52ZWhen Confederate-glorifying monuments went up in the South, voting in Black areas went down<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541540/original/file-20230807-32816-6usu56.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4556%2C3136&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators hold Confederate flags near the monument for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis on June 25, 2015, in Richmond, Va., after it was spray-painted with the phrase 'Black Lives Matter.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DavisStatueVandalized/ebf030ed819f4497a47fa322218756f4/photo?Query=Confederate%20monuments&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1935&currentItemNo=139">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Confederate monuments <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/09/421531368/south-carolina-gov-nikki-haley-to-sign-confederate-flag-bill-into-law">burst into public consciousness in 2015</a> when a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, instigated the first broad calls for their removal. The shooter intended to start a race war and had posed with Confederate imagery in photos posted online.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html">Monument removal efforts grew in 2017</a> after a counterprotester was killed at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacist groups defended the preservation of Confederate monuments. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970610428/nearly-100-confederate-monuments-removed-in-2020-report-says-more-than-700-remai">Removal movements saw widespread success in 2020</a> following George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police.</p>
<p>These events <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/racist-statues-controversial-monuments-in-america-robert-lee-columbus/index.html">linked Confederate monuments to modern racist beliefs</a> and acts. But whether monuments carry inherent racism or are merely misinterpreted requires further exploration.</p>
<p><a href="http://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20211067">Research by economist Jhacova A. Williams has shown</a> that Black Americans who live in areas that have a relatively higher number of streets named after prominent Confederate generals “are less likely to be employed, are more likely to be employed in low-status occupations, and have lower wages compared to Whites.” </p>
<p><a href="https://alexntaylor.github.io">I study economic and political history</a> and have researched the effects of <a href="http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4451402">Confederate monuments in the post-Civil War South</a>. I found that these symbols helped solidify the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow era</a>, which established segregation across the South and lasted from the 1880s until the 1960s. These symbols were accompanied by increases in the vote share of the <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow">Democratic Party – the racist party</a> that had supported slavery and, after the Civil War, supported segregation for another century. The building of these monuments was also accompanied by reductions in voter turnout. Further research I conducted shows that these political effects disproportionately occurred in areas with a larger share of Black residents. </p>
<p>In other words, as these monuments were erected, the vote increased for members of the then-racist Democratic Party, and people turned out to vote in lower numbers in predominantly Black areas.</p>
<p>These findings demonstrate that a connection existed between racism and these monuments from their inception – and provide context for modern monument debates.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People hold a large tarpaulin beneath a statue of a man riding a horse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541554/original/file-20230807-25-tgnnsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richmond, Va., city workers prepare to drape a tarp over a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ConfederateMonumentsProtest/31b060bdbdd84f349a5bc96319bcccc3/photo">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monumental history</h2>
<p>The South saw almost no monument dedications during the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heritage_timeline_print.pdf">Monuments first appeared during the Reconstruction era</a> – 1865 to 1877 – when Southern states were occupied by the North and integrated back into the Union. </p>
<p>Reconstruction-era monuments in general <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ghosts-of-the-confederacy-9780195054200?cc=be&lang=en&#">did not glorify the Confederacy</a>. These monuments largely honored the dead and were placed in cemeteries and spaces distant from daily life. They compartmentalized the trauma of the war, commemorating lives but not placing the Confederacy at the center of Southern identity.</p>
<p>As Reconstruction neared its end in 1875, a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2015651796/">Stonewall Jackson monument erected in Richmond, Virginia</a>, foreshadowed the different monuments to come. </p>
<p>The monument’s dedication drew 50,000 spectators and included a military-style parade. The potential presence of a local all-Black militia <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008199">proved to be controversial</a>. To avoid accusations of race mixing, organizers planned to place the militia and any other Black participants in the back of the parade. </p>
<p>The militia did not attend, likely in anticipation of the controversy, and the only Black Southerners present in the parade were formerly enslaved people who had served in the <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/stonewall-brigade/">Confederacy’s Stonewall Brigade</a>. This stark picture of Southern race relations served as a preview of political developments to come.</p>
<p>This trend continued after Reconstruction, which ended with the <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/struggle_president.html">Compromise of 1877</a>. This compromise settled the disputed 1876 presidential election, giving Republicans the presidency and <a href="https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813108131/the-life-and-death-of-the-solid-south/">Democrats, then a pro-segregation party</a>, full political control of the South. Democrats subsequently established what would become known as <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312302412/americannightmare">Jim Crow laws</a> across the South, an array of restrictive and discriminatory laws that disenfranchised Black Southerners and made them second-class citizens.</p>
<p>Monuments played a cultural role in establishing the Jim Crow South. Unlike Reconstruction monuments, post-Reconstruction monuments were erected in prominent public spaces, and their focus shifted toward the portrayal and glorification of famous Confederates. Monument dedication ceremonies were particularly popular around the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/whose-heritage">peaking in 1911</a>.</p>
<p>Additional Confederate monuments have been dedicated since that period, but those numbers pale in comparison to the monument-building spree of 1878 to 1912.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two flags fly near a monument to a soldier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541556/original/file-20230807-32733-ogjdti.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mississippi state and U.S. flags fly near the Rankin County Confederate Monument in the downtown square of Brandon, Miss., on March 3, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ConfederateMemorialDay/337ff60bdb974c22ab9798576adc1d15/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Monumental effects</h2>
<p><a href="http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4451402">My research</a> investigates the political effects of Confederate monuments in the Reconstruction and early post-Reconstruction – 1877-1912 – eras, namely their effects on Democratic Party vote share and voter turnout.</p>
<p>I expected monuments’ potential effects to be directly related to their centrality to everyday life and glorification of the Confederacy. This is the primary difference between soldier-memorializing Reconstruction and Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. </p>
<p>I expected to find little political effect from soldier-memorializing Reconstruction monuments, but some pro-Jim Crow effects from Confederate-glorifying post-Reconstruction monuments. As monuments moved from cemeteries into central public spaces such as parks and squares, I expected them to affect voters’ decisions.</p>
<p>That is precisely what I found. </p>
<p>During Reconstruction, counties that dedicated Confederate monuments saw no change in voter turnout or Democratic Party vote share in biennial congressional elections. These symbols were soldier-memorializing and physically separate from public life and did not influence voter decision-making.</p>
<p>However, when monuments began to glorify the Confederacy and shifted into public life, political effects emerged. </p>
<p>Counties that dedicated monuments in the early post-Reconstruction period saw, on average, a 5.5 percentage point increase in Democratic Party vote share and a 2.2 percentage point decrease in voter turnout compared with other counties.</p>
<p>As monuments changed, so did their effect on the public. Glorifying public monuments communicated to the public that the Confederacy was worth preserving, thus strengthening Democratic majorities and lowering participation in the political process.</p>
<p>Larger Democratic majorities alongside lower voter turnout already suggests Black Southerners, who almost exclusively voted for Republicans at that time, were voting less in areas with monuments. I conducted further exploration and found that these political effects disproportionately occurred in counties with larger Black populations. This suggests that Black voters were more responsive to Confederate monuments, which suppressed their political activity by signaling they were not accepted by the local community.</p>
<p>The effects of post-Reconstruction monuments suggest that they played a role in continued racism throughout the South into the early 20th century. </p>
<p>Their controversy today demonstrates the values still conveyed by their presence in society. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjad014">Recent research</a> has demonstrated the long-run effects of the spread of Southern white culture and prejudices across the United States post-Civil War, connecting it to higher levels of modern-day Republican Party voting and conservative values. </p>
<p>It is thus no wonder Confederate monuments, as prominent symbols of pro-Confederate, Southern white culture, continue to be – and are likely to remain – cultural flashpoints.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander N. Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The drive to remove Confederate monuments links those monuments to modern racism. An economic historian shows that the intent and effect of those monuments from inception was to perpetuate racism.Alexander N. Taylor, PhD Candidate in Economics, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029232023-08-04T12:28:44Z2023-08-04T12:28:44ZA brief history of the Ku Klux Klan Acts: 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541074/original/file-20230803-29-pqkkiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1306%2C80%2C5397%2C4362&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on an indictment against former U.S. President Donald Trump on Aug. 1, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/special-counsel-jack-smith-delivers-remarks-on-a-recently-news-photo/1586082375?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the indictment against former President Donald Trump and his role in the Jan. 6 violent attack against the U.S. Capitol, special prosecutor Jack Smith charged the former president with violating four different federal laws – and Trump pleaded not guilty to each one of them on Aug. 3, 2023. </p>
<p>Three of the charges in <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/trump-jan-6-indictment-2020-election/1f1c76972b25c802/full.pdf">United States of America v. Donald J. Trump</a> are fairly easy to understand. They require a jury to determine whether Trump tried to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and if he knowingly conspired to obstruct the certification of results on Jan. 6, 2021, all in an attempt to remain in the White House. </p>
<p>But the fourth charge against Trump – of conspiring against the rights of the voters to cast ballots and have them fairly and honestly counted – is more complicated, and it comes from a dark time in U.S. history.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://english.cofc.edu/faculty-staff-listing/kelly-joe.php">a historian</a> who studies and writes about democracy and the American South, I believe the 1870s have something to teach us about the fourth count in the Jan. 6 case against Trump. </p>
<h2>Ku Klux Klan Acts</h2>
<p>The indictment asserts that Trump knowingly conspired “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States – that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”</p>
<p>That quote comes from a series of laws enacted in the 1870s called the Ku Klux Klan Acts. They are officially known as the <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html">Enforcement Acts</a> because they empowered the federal government to enforce the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=With%20the%20adoption%20of%20the,the%20civil%20rights%20of%20Americans.">Civil War amendments</a> – the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=Section%201.-,Neither%20slavery%20nor%20involuntary%20servitude%2C%20except%20as%20a%20punishment%20for,place%20subject%20to%20their%20jurisdiction.">13th</a>, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:%7E:text=No%20State%20shall%20make%20or,Section%202.">14th</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/15th-amendment">15th</a> amendments that freed enslaved people and guaranteed equal protection of the laws and the right to vote.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/civil-rights-law-could-be-used-indict-trump">Brennan Center for Justice</a> points out, in the 20th century the Supreme Court has ruled that all sorts of election infringements violate the Enforcement Acts, including stuffing ballot boxes and bribing voters. A suspect doesn’t have to commit violence against Black voters to violate the law.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Five people sitting on one side of a table with papers on the table in front of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539636/original/file-20230726-29-44gjjc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former President Donald Trump with his attorneys inside the courtroom during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court on April 4, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-us-president-donald-trump-appears-in-court-at-the-news-photo/1250772070?adppopup=true">Seth Wenig/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Retreat from democracy</h2>
<p>When the Ku Klux Klan tried to steal the 1872 presidential election by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reconstruction-southern-violence/">killing and intimidating</a> newly enfranchised Black men, federal troops swooped into South Carolina and arrested hundreds of Klansmen. The Department of Justice <a href="https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/public/gdcmassbookdig/proceedingsinkuk00unit/proceedingsinkuk00unit.pdf">secured convictions</a> in 140 cases by using the law that is being used to prosecute Trump.</p>
<p>Congress had to expand the attorney general’s staff into an entire <a href="https://www.justice.gov/history/timeline/150-years-department-justice#event-1195101">department of government</a> to handle the excessive case load.</p>
<p>The Klan prosecutions worked.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.270towin.com/1872_Election/">1872 election</a> was relatively free and fair. In South Carolina, where the Black population outnumbered the white population, President Ulysses Grant, who had commanded the Union Army in the Civil War and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ulysses-s-grant/">led it to victory</a> over the Confederacy, won with 75% of the vote.</p>
<p><iframe id="tYrfU" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tYrfU/9/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>After Grant was reelected, many champions of Black rights lapsed into what historians often characterize as a moral fatigue. According to historian Eric Foner’s “<a href="https://archive.org/details/reconstructionam0000fone/page/524/mode/2up?view=theater">Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution</a>,” a “resurgence of overt racism” in the North triggered a “retreat from Reconstruction.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/">turning point</a> was at Colfax, Louisiana. </p>
<p>Just before Easter in 1873, federal soldiers steamed up Louisiana’s Red River to investigate reports of yet another wave of white terrorism against Black citizens. </p>
<p>As later described by <a href="https://archive.org/details/horriblemassacre00newo/page/14/mode/2up">Col. T.W. DeKlyne</a>, as the soldiers approached the town of Colfax, they saw neglected neglected crops and abandoned farmhouses. They followed a trail of corpses to the charred, smoking remains of the courthouse, whose grounds were strewn with more dead bloating in the sun. Some were burnt. Others had been shot, execution style, in the back of the head. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://archive.org/details/dayfreedomdiedco00lane/page/266/mode/2up?view=theater">history of the Colfax massacre</a>, journalist Charles Lane estimated that between 62 and 81 Black men were killed, most after they surrendered to the white militia. </p>
<p>Despite the bloodshed, Louisiana officials did nothing to hold the murderers accountable. </p>
<p>But federal attorneys indicted 98 men. Nine stood trial, including one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/black-lives-civil-rights.html">William Cruikshank</a>, who Lane described as the “burly, self-confident” plantation owner who had supervised the executions. </p>
<p>Cruikshank was convicted not of murder but of the federal crime of <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/58/united-states-v-cruikshank#">conspiring to violate</a> the civil and voting rights of Americans – the same crime that Trump is charged with. </p>
<p><a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/92/542/">The case</a> was appealed to the Supreme Court, where justices heard all sorts of arguments on the authorities of state and federal governments to enforce voting rights laws. But the real issue was whether the federal government, 11 years after the end of the Civil War, still had the will to protect the civil rights of Black people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white man dressed in a dark military uniform stands at a table with another white man dressed in a military uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this illustration, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, left, accepts the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/robert-e-lee-surrenders-to-general-u-s-grant-royalty-free-illustration/112873439?phrase=ulysses%20s%20grant%20robert%20lee&adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Supreme Court set William Cruikshank free, and white supremacists established racist regimes in every Southern state for nearly 100 years thereafter.</p>
<p>According to Nicholas Lemann, professor emeritus at Columbia University, the Civil War did not end <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/appomattox-court-house">in 1865 at Appomattox Court House</a> – the Virginia village where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.</p>
<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429923613/redemption">The last battle</a>, he contends, was fought at Colfax, and the South won. The South staged unfair elections for the nearly the next 100 years. Not until the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:%7E:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting.">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a> did the federal government signal it would force states to hold free and fair elections.</p>
<h2>Civil War amendments today</h2>
<p>The latest retreat by the Supreme Court from defending Black civil rights might have begun in 2013, in its <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/570/529/">Shelby County v. Holder</a> ruling, in which the justices abolished a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that ensured federal oversight of voting rules in areas with a history of discrimination. The 5-4 majority held that states could be trusted to guarantee citizens’ voting rights.</p>
<p>Writing in dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared enforcing the Civil War amendments to “battling the Hydra,” the multiheaded monster that sprouted new heads after one was defeated. </p>
<p>In North Carolina, for instance, the Republican lawmakers tried to put what is known as the “independent state legislature theory” into practice. <a href="https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/independent-state-legislature-theory-federal-courts-and-state-law">That theory</a> holds that state legislatures are the supreme authority in federal elections. </p>
<p>But in the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1271_3f14.pdf">Moore v. Harper</a> case, Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed and wrote in the 6-3 majority opinion on June 27, 2023, that the “federal court must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review” over elections. </p>
<p>Given this long history of advance and retreat, it’s not surprising, then, that special counsel Jack Smith, in his use of a law to prosecute Trump that dates back to the Reconstruction Era’s laws protecting the Black vote, has reasserted the Department of Justice’s power to enforce the Civil War amendments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Patrick Kelly is affiliated with the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party. </span></em></p>One of the charges against Donald Trump dates back to the 1870s and was designed to give the federal government the power to ensure states held free and fair elections.Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999512023-07-17T12:25:03Z2023-07-17T12:25:03ZInternational African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., pays new respect to the enslaved Africans who landed on its docks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537383/original/file-20230713-21-9njk23.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the exhibits of notable Black people on display at International African American Museum.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.world-architects.com/en/architecture-news/headlines/iaam-in-pictures">courtesy of v2com/International African American Museum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before Congress <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/slave-trade.html">ended the transatlantic slave trade</a> in 1808, the Port of Charleston was <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/news/special_reports/slavery-in-charleston-a-chronicle-of-human-bondage-in-the-holy-city/article_54334e04-4834-50b7-990b-f81fa3c2804a.html">the nation’s epicenter</a> of human trafficking. </p>
<p>Almost half of the estimated 400,000 African people imported into what became the United States were brought to that Southern city, and <a href="https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/sectionii_introduction">a substantial number</a> took their first steps on American soil at <a href="https://www.preservationsociety.org/locations/gadsdens-wharf/">Gadsden’s Wharf</a> on the Cooper River.</p>
<p>That location of once utter degradation is now the hallowed site of the <a href="https://iaamuseum.org/">International African American Museum</a>. Pronounced “I Am” and <a href="https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-charleston-celebrates-a-new-museum-a-new-day/article_316fd1e0-0fad-11ee-a08a-7b6f11f64bdc.html">opened in June 2023</a>, the US$120 million project financed by state and local funds and private donations was 25 years in the making and is a memorial to not only those enslaved but also those whose lives as free Black Americans affected U.S. history and society through their fight for full citizenship rights. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://asalh.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/BIOGRAPHY-POWERS.pdf">a historian</a> and founding director of the College of Charleston’s <a href="https://studyslaverycharleston.cofc.edu/">Center for the Study of Slavery</a> in Charleston, I served as the museum’s interim executive director and know firsthand how difficult the road has been to build a museum focused on African American history. </p>
<p>The museum’s mission is to honor the untold stories of the African American journey and, by virtue of its location and landscape design, pay reverence to the ground on which it sits.</p>
<h2>America’s widespread historical illiteracy</h2>
<p>Many Americans don’t know much about the nation or its history. </p>
<p>In the 2022 “<a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/civics/2022/">Nation’s Report Card</a>,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed ongoing deficiencies in <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/03/history-civic-test-results-covid-schools">eighth grade students’ knowledge</a> of U.S. history and civics. </p>
<p>Only 20% of test-takers scored proficient or above in civics, and, for American history, only 13% achieved proficiency.</p>
<p>The adult population shows similar deficits. </p>
<p>A 2018 <a href="https://woodrow.org/news/american-history-report/">Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation</a> survey shockingly revealed only <a href="https://citizensandscholars.org/resource/national-survey-finds-just-1-in-3-americans-would-pass-citizenship-test/">36% of people who were born in the U.S.</a> knew enough basic American history and government to pass the citizenship test.</p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/politics/woke-2024-gop-primary/67-ad81efcb-860c-4663-b04c-a06452961284">conservative political candidates</a> are working to prevent current students from learning key information about the country’s founding and development by mischaracterizing the teaching of slavery and civil rights as <a href="https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05">critical race theory</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A small advertisement with large black letters gives the details on the sale of 25 Black people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536689/original/file-20230710-29-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An advertisement details the auction sale of 25 enslaved Black people at Ryan’s Mart in Charleston, S.C., on Sept. 25, 1852.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/broadside-by-louis-de-saussure-of-a-sale-of-25-enslaved-sea-news-photo/1457493575?adppopup=true">Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though critical race theory is typically taught in graduate and law schools, <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism">at least 36</a> states had banned or tried to ban lessons on Black history from public K-12 classrooms. </p>
<p>In this highly politicized environment, efforts to restrict how race can be discussed in public schools have led to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/authors-color-speak-efforts-ban-books-race/story?id=81491208">widespread calls from parents and politicians</a> for the censorship of certain books on race. </p>
<p>These new restrictions have had an impact on public education, according to the <a href="https://ncheteach.org/post/How-do-we-Navigate-the-Culture-Wars-in-History-Classrooms-this-Year">National Council for History Education</a>. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-3.html">2022 survey of teachers</a> conducted by the <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-7.html">Rand Corp.</a> showed the restrictions “influenced their choice of curriculum materials or instructional practices,” as many “chose to or were directed to omit the use of certain materials” deemed “controversial or potentially offensive.”</p>
<h2>South Carolinians’ overlooked national impact</h2>
<p>One of the first things visitors see at the museum is an <a href="https://iaamuseum.org/building-and-garden/">African Ancestors Memorial Garden</a>, which includes a graphic stone relief depicting <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p277.html">captive Africans during the Middle Passage</a>.</p>
<p>But the museum is not just a memorial site of enslavement. </p>
<p>Exhibits show how the lives of Black people and their resistance to enslavement helped shape state, national and international affairs.</p>
<p>For example, South Carolina’s 1739 <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p284.html">Stono Rebellion</a>, in which fugitive slaves attempted to escape to Spanish Florida, precipitated conflict between Spain and Great Britain. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An image of a black man is shown near docks on a river." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537401/original/file-20230713-25-t9p97g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An exhibit detailing African people’s migration around the Atlantic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://iaamuseum.org/news/surface-mag-the-long-awaited-international-african-american-museum/">courtesy of v2com/International African American Museum</a></span>
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<p>Many Americans know about white abolitionist <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/john-browns-raid.htm">John Brown’s 1859 attack</a> against the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, which led to the Civil War. </p>
<p>But few know that <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479802753/the-untold-story-of-shields-green/">Shields Green</a>, a South Carolina fugitive slave, assisted in the planning and execution of the fateful attack.</p>
<p>Even fewer know of <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2cxx8zq">South Carolina’s role</a> in the Civil Rights Movement.</p>
<p>Many know the name Rosa Parks, but it was Charleston’s educator and activist <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/clark-septima-poinsette">Septima Clark</a> who inspired Parks and led the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern educational and voting rights initiatives. </p>
<p>In fact, King <a href="https://avery.cofc.edu/the-legacy-of-septima-p-clark-by-kangkang-kovacs/">once called Clark</a> “the mother of the movement” and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09612029900200193">considered her to be</a> a “community teacher, an intuitive fighter for human rights and leader of her unlettered and disillusioned people.”</p>
<h2>A monument to freedom</h2>
<p>The museum’s educational goals are ambitious. </p>
<p>It is an interdisciplinary history museum, where educators plan to work with teachers and administrators around the world to make sure students in American schools – and everyone who lives in the U.S. today and in the future – learns about South Carolina’s significant role in U.S. history. </p>
<p>In my view, that collaboration will likely be challenging, given the efforts to sanitize the nation’s racial history and teachers’ apprehensions about teaching supposedly controversial subjects. </p>
<p>“This is a site of trauma,” Tonya Matthews, CEO and president of the museum, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/international-african-american-museum-charleston-south-carolina-trauma-triumph/">told CBS News</a>. “But look who’s standing here now. That’s what makes it a site of joy, and triumph.”</p>
<p>Indeed, the International African American museum is, by design, a monument to freedom – and an honest engagement with America’s troubled racial past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernard Powers is a board member of the International African American Museum. </span></em></p>The new museum opened at a time when the teaching of Black history is under attack by conservative politicians.Bernard Powers, Professor of History Emeritus, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2082722023-07-10T12:29:10Z2023-07-10T12:29:10Z‘Idiots,’ ‘criminals’ and ‘scum’ – nasty politics highest in US since the Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536078/original/file-20230706-15-1575vv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C26%2C5991%2C3961&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors summit in June 2023 in Philadelphia. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/republican-presidential-candidate-former-u-s-president-news-photo/1506161556?adppopup=true">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joe Biden, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.” </p>
<p><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-republicans-conjure-familiar-enemy-attacking-democrats-marxists-100187077">This is what Donald Trump said</a> to his supporters hours after pleading not guilty in federal court in June 2023 to his mishandling of classified documents. </p>
<p>The indictment of a former president was shocking, but Trump’s words were not. Twenty years ago, his rhetoric would have been unusual coming from any member of Congress, let alone a party leader. Yet language like this from the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/politics/cnn-poll-republican-primary-field/index.html">leading Republican presidential candidate</a> is becoming remarkably common in American politics. </p>
<p>It’s not just Republicans. In 2019, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker appeared on a talk show bemoaning Trump’s rhetoric and the lack of civility in politics. But he then went on to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/454311-cory-booker-my-testosterone-sometimes-makes-me-want-to-punch-trump/">call Trump</a> a “physically weak specimen” and said that his own “testosterone makes me want to” punch Trump.</p>
<p>How bad have things gotten? In <a href="https://www.zeitzoff.com/book-project.html">my new book</a>, I show that the level of nastiness in U.S. politics has increased dramatically. As an indication of that, I collected historical data from The New York Times on the relative frequency of stories involving Congress that contained keywords associated with nasty politics such as “smear,” “brawl” and “slander.” I found that nasty politics is more prevalent than at any time since the U.S. Civil War. </p>
<p>Particularly following the Jan. 6. insurrection by Trump’s supporters, journalists and scholars have focused on the rise of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/politics/republican-violent-rhetoric.html">politics of menace</a>. In May 2023, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger testified before Congress and <a href="https://wtop.com/congress/2023/05/u-s-capitol-police-facing-more-threats-while-understaffed/">said that</a> one of the biggest challenges the U.S. Capitol Police face today “is dealing with the sheer increase in the number of threats against the members of Congress. It’s gone up over 400% over the last six years.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A balding man in a dark blazer and blue shirt standing against a yellow wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536074/original/file-20230706-29-jtwzj7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Aug. 25, 2017, booking photo of U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, a Montana Republican who was later convicted of assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. Gianforte is now Montana’s governor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AssaultChargeGianforte/c65894c8f1414bd0ae3cd66a45399418/photo?Query=(renditions.phototype:horizontal)%20AND%20%20(Gianforte%20reporter)%20&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=32&currentItemNo=6">Gallatin County Detention Center via AP, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From insults to actual violence</h2>
<p>“Nasty politics” is an umbrella term for the <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/30/yes-political-rhetoric-can-incite-violence-222019/">aggressive rhetoric</a> and occasional actual violence that politicians use against domestic political opponents and other domestic groups. </p>
<p>Insults are the least threatening and most common form of nasty politics. These include politicians’ references to opponents as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/27/liz-cheney-electing-idiots/">idiots</a>,” “<a href="https://www.axios.com/2019/09/25/adam-schiff-ukraine-trump-transcript-impeachment">criminals</a>” or “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/467131-trump-blasts-never-trump-republicans-as-human-scum/">scum</a>.” Leveling accusations or using conspiracy theories to claim an opponent is engaging in <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/28/democrats-trump-russia-investigation-congress-1025919">something nefarious</a> is also common in nasty politics. </p>
<p>Less common – and more ominous – are threats to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sheerafrenkel/12-people-who-actually-jailed-their-political-opponents">jail political opponents</a> or encouraging one’s supporters to commit violence against those opponents. </p>
<p>In 2021, Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/11/18/1056761894/rep-paul-gosar-is-censured-over-an-anime-video-depicting-him-of-killing-aoc">tweeted</a> out an anime cartoon video of his likeness killing Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. </p>
<p>The rarest and most extreme examples of nasty politics entail politicians actively engaging in violence themselves. For instance, in 2017, Republican U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/happened-republican-greg-gianforte-body-slammed-reporter/story?id=58610691">body-slammed</a> a reporter from The Guardian. Gianforte would later win his 2018 election and is the current governor of Montana.</p>
<p>But nasty politics is not just a U.S. phenomenon. </p>
<h2>Deadly words</h2>
<p>In 2016, then-candidate Rodrigo Duterte famously promised Philippine voters that when he was president he would kill 100,000 drug dealers and that “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines.html">fish will grow fat</a>” from all the bodies in Manila Bay. </p>
<p>In 2017, in a speech on the one-year anniversary of the failed coup attempt against him, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20170715-erdogan-turkey-threatens-chop-off-traitors-heads-coup-anniversary-speech">threatened</a> to “chop off the heads of those traitors.” </p>
<p>Before Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-721498">murdered by a far-right Jewish extremist</a> in 1995, then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu railed against Rabin’s support for territorial compromise with Palestinians. In an op-ed in The New York Times, Netanyahu compared Rabin’s potential peace deal with Palestinians to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/05/opinion/peace-in-our-time.html">Neville Chamberlain’s</a> appeasement of the Nazis before World War II. In the lead-up to the assassination, Netanyahu spoke at several right-wing rallies at which his supporters held up posters of Rabin in a Nazi uniform, and Netanyahu himself even marched next to a coffin that said “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/opinion/incitement-movie.html">Rabin kills Zionism</a>.” </p>
<p>In Ukraine before the 2022 Russian invasion, the Ukrainian parliament, known as the Rada, many times resembled a meeting of <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-fight/24934282.html">rival soccer hooligans</a> rather than a functioning legislature. Fights among rivals regularly broke out, including the occasional egging and smoke bomb. In 2012, a full-blown legislative riot occurred in the Rada over the status of the Russian language in Ukraine, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/ukraine-parliament-debate-over-language-escalates-into-a-brawl.html">rival lawmakers punching and choking one another</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a blue striped shirt, standing among a number of people, raises his clenched fist." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536076/original/file-20230706-17-zoq2h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philippines presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte clenches his fist during a campaign visit to Silang township, Philippines, on April 22, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PhilippinesElectionsDuterte/756a5ca3edf046aa91b239aacdb16e0f/photo?Query=(renditions.phototype:horizontal)%20AND%20(persons.person_featured:%22Rodrigo%20Duterte%22)%20AND%20Duterte&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=&totalCount=502&currentItemNo=14">AP Photo/Bullit Marquez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Voters don’t like it</h2>
<p>The conventional wisdom for the reason politicians go nasty is that while voters find mudslinging or political brawling distasteful, it’s actually <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/304141-the-dirty-secret-about-negative-campaign-ads-they/">effective</a>. Or that although they won’t admit it, voters secretly like nasty politics. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/11/01/662730647/poll-nearly-4-in-5-voters-concerned-incivility-will-lead-to-violence">polling</a> consistently shows the opposite. </p>
<p>Voters don’t like it when politicians go nasty, are worried it could lead to violence, and reduce their support for those who do use it. That’s what I found in countless surveys in the U.S., Ukraine and Israel, where I did research for my book. Other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000140">research in the U.S.</a> finds that even ardent Trump supporters reduced their approval for him when he used uncivil language.</p>
<p>So why do politicians use nasty politics? </p>
<p>First, nasty politics grabs attention. </p>
<p>Nasty rhetoric is more likely to get covered in the media, or to get likes, clicks or shares on social media than its civil counterpart. For Trump, some of his most-shared tweets were one <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/politics/trump-antifa-terrorist-group.html">labeling antifa</a> a “terrorist” organization and a clip of him <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/02/trump-body-slam-cnn-tweet-violence-reporters-wrestlemania">body-slamming</a> a pro wrestler with CNN’s logo superimposed. </p>
<p>Second, given their attention-grabbing nature, nasty politics can be a particularly important tool for opposition or outsider politicians. These politicians who don’t have the name recognition, or access to the same resources as party leaders, can use nasty politics to get noticed and build a following. </p>
<p>Third, and perhaps most important, nasty politics can be used to signal toughness. This toughness is something that voters seek out when they <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/authoritarian-dynamic/7620B99124ED2DBFC6394444838F455A">feel threatened</a>. This sentiment was best captured in a <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryFalwellJr/status/1045853333007798272?s=20">September 2018 tweet</a> from the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., a Trump ally: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing “nice guys”. They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>From nasty words to worse</h2>
<p>Nasty politics has important implications for democracy. </p>
<p>It can be a legitimate tool for opposition and outsider politicians to call attention to bad behavior. But it can also be used as a cynical, dangerous tool by incumbents to cling to power that can lead to violence. </p>
<p>For example, in the lead-up to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump and his supporters concocted a baseless conspiracy that the 2020 election would be stolen. He <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/07/trump-incitement-inflammatory-rhetoric-capitol-riot">implored his supporters</a> to come to Washington on Jan. 6 as part of a rally to support the baseless conspiracy and “Stop the Steal,” and urged followers to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/capitol-mob-trump-supporters.html">Be There. Will Be Wild!</a>” foreshadowing the violence that was to come. </p>
<p>Perhaps most ominously for the near future of U.S. democracy, the growing Trump legal troubles have escalated to violent rhetoric. </p>
<p>After Trump’s indictment in June, Republican U.S. <a href="https://twitter.com/RepAndyBiggsAZ/status/1667241900938502146">Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted: “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye</a>.”</p>
<p>The uptick in nasty politics in the U.S. is both a symptom of the country’s deeply divided politics and a harbinger of future threats to democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208272/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Zeitzoff has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation</span></em></p>Studies show, though, that voters don’t like all that nastiness.Thomas Zeitzoff, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084552023-06-29T20:01:31Z2023-06-29T20:01:31ZFriday essay: the forgotten female soldiers who fought long ago – and why their stories matter today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534509/original/file-20230628-17-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">(Clockwise from left): American civil war soldier Frances Hook; 19th century Dahomey women soldiers; defending a besieged German city in 1615; 18th century British soldier Hannah Snell and Union soldier Frances Clayton. Sources: </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuettel</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the Swedish island of Björkö lie the remains of Birka, a significant Viking trading post. Birka is studded with burial chambers, stuffed with clues about their occupants – amber, textiles, gold, silver and many other treasures. One particular chamber caught the eye of 19th-century archaeologists, who labelled the grave Bj.581. This grave contained weapons: a sword, an axe, a spear, a battle knife, two shields and 25 arrows, and the remains of two horses. </p>
<p>Clearly, this was the grave of a warrior. No one really looked closely at the skeleton in this grave to confirm it was male but for 100 years, the record held that the warrior in Bj.581 was a man.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533952/original/file-20230626-202639-ca7ga3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1889 sketch of the archaeological grave labelled Bj581.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the early 1970s, bone analysis suggested the skeleton was female. DNA analysis published in 2018 confirmed the bones were those of a woman, with two X chromosomes.</p>
<p>The team conducting the DNA analysis also examined the relationship between the skeleton and the contents of the grave, drawing the same conclusion as all previous investigations: “the person in Bj.581 was buried in a grave full of functional weapons and war-gear […] outside the gate of a fortress”. If it looks like a warrior, and is armed like a warrior, it must be a warrior.</p>
<p>Critics were unconvinced. Had the authors of the study got the wrong skeleton? Had another skeleton been mixed up in the grave? (No, the evidence is firm on both points.) In spite of these sceptics, the story of this skeleton took off around the world, precisely because it challenged so many assumptions about women, combat and the history of war.</p>
<p>Women have long fought in wars, but their contribution is often erased. The military historian John Keegan famously wrote in 1993 that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>warfare is […] the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart […] Women […] do not fight. They rarely fight among themselves and they never, in any military sense, fight men. If warfare is as old as history and as universal as mankind, we must now enter the supremely important limitation that it is an entirely masculine activity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it turns out history is full of examples of women on the frontlines: women who fought in their own right, women who dressed as men in order to fight, and women who faced great danger supporting male troops in the teeth of battle. Women have survived and even thrived as part of the machine of war – but are rarely part of military history. Why have their stories been forgotten?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534472/original/file-20230628-30373-mwwsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=633&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An engraving depicting Gesche Meiburg, one of the women who helped to defend besieged Braunschweig in 1615.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbuettel.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A convenient amnesia</h2>
<p>The amnesia about women in combat is a convenient, if not deliberate, forgetting. When Western governments were forced by the 1970s feminist movement to consider the question of whether women should be allowed to fight, they often pointed to the all-male battlefields of the past, even if this history was inaccurate. </p>
<p>Decision-makers refused to see a history in which so-called women camp “followers” were following so closely they were actually on the battlefield, providing food and drink and supporting artillery fire. </p>
<p>They didn’t see women in the thick of battle, fighting alongside men – most often disguised as men, occasionally in their own right, and sometimes (but rarely) even leading those men.</p>
<p>Women were a commonplace feature on battlefields. They also fought in sieges, which for long periods of time were far more common than pitched battles. In the Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin), from the late 18th century, an all-female regiment of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons">crack troops</a> existed for 100 years.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533953/original/file-20230626-20-pk9ejp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dahomey women soldiers photographed around 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Suppressing this history helped perpetuate the exclusion of women from combat. This, in turn, stopped them taking on military leadership roles, which required combat experience – and these roles have been a crucial route to political and societal leadership. But perhaps more importantly, excluding women from combat served as a potent reminder that despite what the feminist movement told the world, women were not equal. </p>
<p>Women, it was long argued, were simply too fragile to fight. They would be uniquely and horrifyingly susceptible to violence on the battlefield. And men would be too distracted by their presence to fight properly; women would disrupt the essential bond between men, between brothers, that allowed for battlefield excellence. </p>
<p>The exclusion of women soldiers from combat was only overturned in Australia in 2011 and in the United States in 2013. In the United Kingdom, all combat roles were finally opened to women in 2018. The exclusion of women from combat for so long was justified by a dominant view of history that presented women as having rarely demonstrated an aptitude or interest in fighting. But that history is wrong.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534216/original/file-20230627-29-9zpqxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A female American soldier tackles an obstacle course while training in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robin Trimarchi/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-i-want-to-serve-on-the-front-line-despite-challenges-for-women-at-war-3622">Why I want to serve on the front line, despite challenges for women at war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A ‘very good-looking corporal in our regiment’</h2>
<p>One of the most common, and intriguing, ways for women to enter combat was in male disguise. Women who dressed as men to become soldiers are known to have fought in the armies and navies of Russia, England, the Netherlands, France, various German states, and both sides of the American Civil War. </p>
<p>Around 119 cross-dressing women are documented as having served in Holland between 1550 and 1840; around 40 in <em>ancien regime</em> France; between 30 and 70 in Revolutionary France; 22 in the Prussian army during the wars against Napoleon in the early 19th century; and more than 60 in Britain between 1660 and 1832.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534252/original/file-20230627-27-rjhwty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1088&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ann Mills served on board the Royal Navy’s Maidstone frigate dressed as a man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While these women were motivated to fight for many reasons – including safety, as life in the military was often more safe for a woman than life outside it – one of their primary motives was patriotism.</p>
<p>During the American Civil War, (1861–65), between 250 and 1,000 women fought. (The reason for the variation in all these numbers is that it is impossible to know how many disguised women fought – by definition we only know about the ones who were uncovered, not those whose masquerade was never challenged). There are multiple accounts of soldiers finding women’s bodies among the dead on both sides of the conflict. </p>
<p>One Union Soldier remarked of a Confederate soldier, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve picked up a great many wounded rebs [rebels …] among these were found a female dressed in mens clothes & a cartridge box on her side […] she was shot in the breast & through the thy and was still alive &; as gritty as any reb I ever saw".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Part of the reason for the large number of disguised women during the Civil War is that all traditional forms of service for women (such as nursing or laundry) were reserved for men. The only way for a woman to join the war effort was to fight. More than 2 million men served in the Union Army and between 750,000 and a million men were in the Confederate forces over the course of the war.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-confederate-flag-so-offensive-143256">Why is the Confederate flag so offensive?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Both sides were fighting a bitterly contested war with an almost insatiable need for manpower. This seems to have reduced the need for physical checks of soldiers, and as fighters were drawn from the general population, experience and skill were not the prerequisites they might otherwise have been. </p>
<p>One Union soldier described a new recruit encountered on a long march: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>we enlisted a new recruit on the way to Eastport. The boys all took a notion to him. On examination, he proved to have a Cunt so he was discharged.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533966/original/file-20230626-64693-pa09h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illinois soldier Frances Hook also known as Private Frank Miller, Frank Henderson and Frank Fuller, pictured circa 1861 and 1865.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At least eight disguised women fought at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam">Battle of Antietam</a>, where on the bloodiest day of the conflict, 30,000 were killed; this number may have been more, because investigations of a grave site near another battle found a female skeleton among the men. Her identity remains unknown. </p>
<p>Of the eight fighters at Antiteam, one woman had an arm amputated; one was shot in the neck. Another survived that battle, and the Battle of Fredericksburg, where she was promoted to sergeant only to give birth a month later. </p>
<p>There are confirmed accounts of five women fighting at Gettysburg. One lost her leg and two marched in the famous Confederate Army infantry assault called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett%27s_Charge">Pickett’s Charge</a>. One of these anonymous women could be heard screaming in agony from her wounds on the battlefield. She would not have been alone. The Confederate Army lost more than half of the soldiers who fought that day to injury or death: 6,555 men.</p>
<p>Pregnancy of officers should have been a giveaway that there were disguised women in the ranks. And yet, one memo read, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The general commanding directs me to call your attention to a flagrant outrage committed in your command […] an orderly sergeant […] was to-day delivered of a baby – which is in violation of all military law and the army regulations. No such case has been known since the days of Jupiter. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another soldier wrote to his wife, regaling her with the story of the “very good looking corporal in our regiment” who had fallen ill, before “this same good looking corporal had been relieved of a very nice little boy and that the corporal and the boy was doing first rate”. </p>
<p>His wife wrote back: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it was quite a grand thing about that corporal what a woman she must have been […] she must have been more than the common run of woman or she could never stood soldiering especially in her condition.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533967/original/file-20230626-24-7wjt71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Lyons Wakeman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women recorded their own experiences in letters home, and some were unafraid of a soldier’s life. Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (Private Lyons Wakeman) wrote to her parents about fighting and marching with a typical soldier’s bravado. “I don’t fear the rebel bullets and I don’t fear the cannon…” </p>
<p>After a battle, she explained, “I had to face the enemy bullets with my regiment. I was under fire about four hours and laid on the field of battle all night.”</p>
<p>Women soldiers in the Civil War, despite extensive documentation (and photographs), were not officially recognised by Americans later on. In fact, their existence was totally denied. In 1909, the investigative journalist Ida Tarbell wrote to the adjutant general of the US Army asking whether his department had a record of the number of women who enlisted and served in the Civil War. </p>
<p>Tarbell received the following reply: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have the honour to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States […] during the period of the civil war. It is possible, however, that there may have been a few instances of women having served as soldiers for a short time without their sex having been detected, but no record of such cases is known to exist in the official files. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The office of the adjutant-general was either lying or lazy: they did have records of women’s military service, including discharge records and pension records.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1314&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1314&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534508/original/file-20230628-21-azrnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1651&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frances Clayton enlisted in the Union Army under the name Jack Williams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The playbook of patriarchy</h2>
<p>Suppressing the memory of women’s combat wasn’t limited to the period after the American Civil War. The many examples of female combat during the 20th century included 800,000 to a million women who fought for the Red Army during World War II. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534203/original/file-20230626-33184-bzl1g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1015&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Russian civil war poster, circa 1917-1921.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet officialdom chose to believe that women may have fought when their countries were desperate, as the Soviets were, or in rare exceptions cross-dressed as men, but as they were “exceptional”, their experiences were simply discounted. </p>
<p>In essence, keeping women out of combat became part of the of the playbook of patriarchy – at a time when the feminist movement was breaking down all the barriers to female employment in every other imaginable category. (The US had female astronauts in training 30 years before it allowed women in combat).</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=856&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534255/original/file-20230627-16-evdjnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1075&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roza Shanina, a graduate of the Soviet Union’s Central Women’s Sniper Training School, during WWII.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The contribution of women to warfare isn’t just important in historical terms. There is a strong link between authoritarianism and the suppression of gender equality. The right to engage in combat is no different from any other right. </p>
<p>Before his 2016 election, it was <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/01/president-trump-would-be-a-disaster-for-women-in-the-military-sexism-clinton-election/">widely reported</a> Donald Trump was opposed to women in combat. One <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/03/trump-voters-dont-like-women-in-military-combat-roles-that-may-have-consequences-for-the-use-of-force/">study</a> showed the two strongest factors associated with opposing the deployment of a co-ed unit into combat were support for Trump and support for the Republican Party. </p>
<p>Moreover, women’s demonstrated capacity in combat serves as a profound reminder of their overall social equality; it is harder to take away women’s rights if they are equal on every level with men. </p>
<h2>Ukraine today</h2>
<p>Today, we are sitting at the crest of a major change, whereby generations of women will move through the military with no ceiling on their progression and no rules telling them what they cannot do. The consequences of this change are already visible in places like Ukraine. </p>
<p>The first Russian invasion in 2014 caused Ukraine to reassess its use of women in the military. In 2018, all positions were opened to women. By 2021, there were 57,000 women in the Ukrainian military, about 22.8% (vastly exceeding most other countries). Ukrainian women were ready to fight when Russia invaded last year, and there has not been much fuss about it. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533964/original/file-20230626-98865-zpv5wg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A female Ukrainian soldier poses for a photo against a Kherson sign on November 11, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dagaz/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>They have taken on all roles, including leadership positions. They are fighting an enemy that has resolutely kept women out of combat, despite significant recruitment issues (and a long, if now ignored, history of female combat). Ukraine is far from a perfect place for gender equality in wider society. But as it becomes normal for women to fight, and as they become heroes of the war, things may change.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-attitudes-to-women-in-the-military-are-changing-as-thousands-serve-on-front-lines-198195">Ukraine war: attitudes to women in the military are changing as thousands serve on front lines</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The conflict between Ukraine and Russia also underlines the argument that authoritarian governments, whatever their diversity, have one thing in common: they suppress women’s rights. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hyper-masculine style has relied on traditional views about gender. Domestic violence was decriminalised in Russia in 2017, and now is only punishable as a crime when the abuse is so severe it requires hospitalisation. Russian women are still barred from a list of 100 professions. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the Russian military facing off against Ukraine has no combatant women in it – even when Putin had to forcibly conscript men to fight in 2022, he did not mobilise women. Indeed, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_combat">list</a> of nations that admit women into combat roles remains almost exclusively a list of democracies with high levels of gender equality. Allowing women in combat roles is a key measure of gender equality.</p>
<p>As time goes on, in these countries at least, women will get more and more chances to demonstrate their leadership in the crucible of combat – and to bring back that leadership into society.</p>
<p><em>Sarah Percy is the author of <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/sarah-percy/forgotten-warriors-a-history-of-women-on-the-front-line">Forgotten Warriors: a History of Women on the Front Line</a>, published by Hachette.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am the author of a book from which this essay is drawn but this will be clearly credited.</span></em></p>Fighting in sieges, an army of crack female troops, cross-dressing as male soldiers: women have survived and thrived as part of the war machine. But they’re rarely included in military histories.Sarah Percy, Professor of International Relations, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084252023-06-28T13:02:55Z2023-06-28T13:02:55ZAmericans in former Confederate states more likely to say violent protest against government is justified, 160 years after Gettysburg<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534090/original/file-20230626-15-oruqz8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C9%2C3283%2C2461&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dead soldiers lie on the battlefield at Gettysburg in July of 1863. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dead-soldiers-lie-on-the-battlefield-at-gettysburg-where-23-news-photo/615314046?adppopup=true">Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the July Fourth long weekend, people will pour into the small town of <a href="https://www.gettysburgpa.gov/history/slideshows/battle-history">Gettysburg, Pennsylvania</a>, to commemorate the 160th anniversary of one of the <a href="https://govbooktalk.gpo.gov/2013/07/02/gettysburg-americas-bloodiest-battle/#:%7E:text=Lasting%20three%20days%20in%201863,dead%20and%20another%2030%2C000%20wounded.">deadliest battles</a> in U.S. history.</p>
<p>The three-day battle left over 50,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead, wounded or missing and cemented Gettysburg’s place in American history as the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/gett/index.htm">turning point of the Civil War</a>.</p>
<p>A few months after the battle, President Abraham Lincoln visited the town for the dedication of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/soldiers-national-cemetery.htm">Soldiers’ National Cemetery</a>. There, he delivered his <a href="https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/gettysburg/good_cause/transcript.htm">famed Gettysburg Address</a>. Lincoln called on Americans to dedicate themselves to the “unfinished work” for which so many at Gettysburg had died: the preservation of the United States and a “new birth of freedom” for the nation.</p>
<p>I have researched Americans’ <a href="https://osf.io/753cb/">support for political violence</a> in my work as a political scientist at <a href="https://www.networkscienceinstitute.org/people/alauna-safarpour">Northeastern</a> and <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/alaunasafarpour">Harvard</a> Universities. As an incoming professor at Gettysburg College, which <a href="https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=books">was attacked by Confederate soldiers</a> and served as a <a href="https://www.gettysburg.edu/news/stories?id=dee02b07-33e7-4ce6-985e-eed77423d127">makeshift hospital</a> during the battle, I wanted to see whether the legacies of the Civil War still affected Americans’ support for political violence today.</p>
<p>I found that, overall, Americans living in the Confederate states that violently rebelled against the United States during the Civil War express significantly greater support for the notion that it can be justifiable to violently protest against the government. </p>
<p>Residents of what are known as the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-border-states.htm">Border States</a>, the slave states that did not secede from the Union, are also more likely than residents of Union states to say it can be justifiable to violently protest against the government. Confederate and Border State support are not statistically different from each other. </p>
<p>Residents of states belonging to the Confederacy are also significantly more likely than Americans living in Union or Border States to say it is justifiable to engage in violent protest against the government right now.</p>
<p><iframe id="EGesv" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/EGesv/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>‘Greater support for political violence’</h2>
<p>From Dec. 22, 2022, to Jan. 17, 2023, my colleagues and I at <a href="https://www.covidstates.org/">The COVID States Project</a>, a multi-university team polling Americans in all 50 U.S. states, surveyed over 20,000 Americans about their support for violent protest against the U.S. government. Our survey asked whether they felt violence is ever justifiable, and whether violence is justifiable right now. </p>
<p>I then analyzed the responses by state residence, grouping survey respondents by their <a href="https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/facts.htm">state’s allegiance</a> in the Civil War: Union, Confederacy or Border State. Americans living in states that did not exist during the Civil War are excluded from the analysis.</p>
<p>Confederate state residents are about 2 percentage points more likely than Union state residents to say it is “definitely” or “probably” justifiable to engage in violent protest against the government. Border State residents are about 3 points more likely than Union residents to say violence can be justified. </p>
<p>When asked whether it is justifiable to engage in violent protest against the government right now, 12% of Confederate state residents say “yes” – which is 2 percentage points higher than the share who say “yes” in Border States and 3 points higher than those in Union states.</p>
<p><iframe id="CxiEh" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/CxiEh/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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<p>To ensure that these results do not reflect underlying social and demographic differences in the residents of these states, I used a statistical technique known as multiple regression. This technique allows researchers to determine the effect of a variable – in this case state residency – on an outcome – support for political violence – after accounting for differences attributable to other factors. </p>
<p>This analysis reveals that even after accounting for partisanship, race, gender, education, age, income, ideology and attitudes toward Black people, residents of Confederate states still express significantly greater support for political violence than do residents of Union or Border states.</p>
<p>Before you start fortifying your homes against a second Civil War, keep in mind that support for political violence – even among residents of the old Confederacy – remains low. </p>
<p>Nowhere close to a majority of Americans are ready to take up arms to overthrow the government. However, as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/">Jan. 6 attack</a> on the U.S. Capitol demonstrated, even a small minority of people intent on violence can cause serious harm to the nation.</p>
<h2>History matters</h2>
<p>Overall, these results point to the importance of historical factors in understanding modern support for political violence. </p>
<p>Political scientists have <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691176741/deep-roots">traced the importance of slavery</a> on modern political attitudes, demonstrating that institutions long since eradicated still shape politics today. </p>
<p><a href="https://news.gsu.edu/research-magazine/rewriting-history-civil-war-textbooks">Research</a> has also shown that Southern myths about the Civil War, including the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause">Lost Cause” narrative of the Confederacy</a> – which casts the Confederate cause as glorious and honorable rather than aimed at maintaining slavery – dominated history textbooks after 1877. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three cannons in front of a stone monument topped with a bronze figure sitting on a horse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534144/original/file-20230626-17-2qu1vz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee mounted on his horse sits atop a ridge held by Confederate troops in Gettysburg, Pa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilWarGettysburg/0d0e148cfdd24433b4065ecc00ded418/photo?Query=Gettysburg&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=666&currentItemNo=NaN&vs=true">AP Photo/Matt Rourke</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/nation-world/2017/08/22/how-civil-war-taught-school-depends-where-you-live/15766977007/#:%7E:text=Some%20schools%20emphasize%20states%27%20rights,commanders%20alongside%20their%20Union%20counterparts.">These distortions affect</a> how modern Americans think about history. As recently as 2017, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20180131/teaching-hard-history">polling by the Southern Poverty Law Center</a> found that just 8% of American 12th graders could correctly identify slavery as <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-really-started-the-american-civil-war-205281">the central cause</a> of the Civil War. </p>
<p>Distorted portrayals of the Civil War as a glorious fight for independence by Southern states may contribute to the significantly greater support for political violence among these states’ residents today. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/17/us/teaching-critical-race-theory.html">current political debate</a> over how history can be taught in public schools highlights the importance of such decisions.</p>
<h2>Lincoln: ‘These dead shall not have died in vain’</h2>
<p>On this grim anniversary, perhaps Americans can spend time contemplating <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=take+increased+devotion+to+the+cause&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#:%7E:text=Gettysburg%20address%20delivered,resource%20%E2%80%BA%20rbpe.24404500">Lincoln’s famous words</a> to “take increased devotion to that cause” for which these honored dead “gave the last full measure of devotion.” </p>
<p>The Civil War was essentially the largest instance of homegrown violence against the government in U.S. history. Now, at a time of <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/03/31/rise-in-political-violence-in-united-states-and-damage-to-our-democracy-pub-87584#:%7E:text=A%20poll%20by%20the%20National,in%20the%20last%20few%20years.&text=Threats%20of%20violence%20against%20election,election%20officials%20had%20experienced%20threats.">increasing political violence</a> in the nation, I believe it is more important than ever to reflect on the Battle of Gettysburg – and the terrible toll wrought by the violence there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alauna Safarpour is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern and Harvard Universities. Beginning in August 2023, she will be an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Gettysburg College. Gettysburg College was attacked by Confederate forces during the Battle of Gettysburg.</span></em></p>On the 160th anniversary of the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg, a political scientist finds that residents of formerly Confederate states express greater support for political violence than others.Alauna Safarpour, Postdoctoral Fellow, Network Science Institute, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068232023-06-01T12:30:56Z2023-06-01T12:30:56ZReparations over formerly enslaved people has a long history: 4 essential reads on why the idea remains unresolved<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529469/original/file-20230531-22271-aukjo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1066%2C201%2C5643%2C4255&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Black man holds up a sign during a Reparations Task Force meeting in Los Angeles, California on Sept. 22, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/los-angeles-californiasept-22-2022los-angeles-long-time-news-photo/1243475910?adppopup=true">Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The debate about reparations to descendants of enslaved people rages on.</p>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/reparations-california-payments-slavery-racism-discrimination-a7d4abb30e8395c805a9f2cc0586bf91">In California</a>, the state’s reparations task force has estimated that the descendants of former enslaved people living in California should receive a payment of $1.2 million per person. </p>
<p>While the issue of reparations is nothing new, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/10/slavery-reparations-california-newsom-00096211">California Governor Gavin Newsome</a> created the task force in 2020 and called for it to offer solutions to the “structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions.”</p>
<p>So far, Newsome has remained quiet on his task force’s recommendations and is awaiting its final report, expected on July 1, 2023. </p>
<p>Several scholars of U.S. slavery and the history of reparations have written articles explaining what the ongoing debate has been about since the idea first emerged after the Civil War. Here we spotlight four examples of those scholars’ work:</p>
<h2>1. Despite gains, persistent racial gaps remain</h2>
<p>While researching his book “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019430&content=reviews">Making Whole What Has Been Smashed</a>,” John Torpey learned that the idea of compensating freed slaves or their descendants has never really gained much traction in the United States.</p>
<p>A driving force behind the persistence of reparations talk is just how stark the racial differences remain, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-40-acres-and-a-mule-to-lbj-to-the-2020-election-a-brief-history-of-slavery-reparation-promises-114547">Torpey wrote</a>.</p>
<p>Compared to whites, Torpey explained, “blacks tend to have lower educational attainment, rates of home ownership and life expectancy but higher rates of poverty, incarceration, unemployment and life-threatening diseases.” </p>
<p>As a result, the wealth gap between whites and Blacks remains very large, Torpey noted, “and wage inequality is likely making it worse.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-40-acres-and-a-mule-to-lbj-to-the-2020-election-a-brief-history-of-slavery-reparation-promises-114547">From ‘40 acres and a mule’ to LBJ to the 2020 election, a brief history of slavery reparation promises</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>2. Righting past wrongs</h2>
<p>Anne Bailey <a href="https://annecbailey.net/">has researched slavery</a> for the past three decades and has concluded that there are many rationales for reparations. </p>
<p>For one, <a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-reparations-is-it-time-for-the-us-to-pay-its-debt-for-the-legacy-of-slavery-151972">Bailey wrote</a>, “There has never been a leveling of the playing field, or payments for the debt of unpaid labor over 250 years of slavery.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, she explained, Black contribution to the wealth of America has not been acknowledged or given its due.</p>
<p>“Paying reparations to Americans of African descent could help the U.S. reclaim some moral leadership on the global stage,” Bailey wrote. “The U.S. is not the only country in the world with human rights abuses then or now, but it can be one of the few countries in the world that truly addresses these wrongs.”</p>
<p>In other words, Bailey concluded, the U.S. can lead by example.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-reparations-is-it-time-for-the-us-to-pay-its-debt-for-the-legacy-of-slavery-151972">Revisiting reparations: Is it time for the US to pay its debt for the legacy of slavery?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>3. Slave owners received reparations</h2>
<p>As a professor of public policy who has studied reparations, <a href="https://expertfile.com/experts/thomas.craemer/thomas-craemer-phd">Thomas Craemer</a> estimates the losses from unpaid wages and lost inheritances to Black descendants of the enslaved in America at around US$20 trillion in 2021 dollars.</p>
<p>“But what often gets forgotten by those who oppose reparations is that payouts for slavery have been made before,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522">Craemer wrote </a>. “But those payments went to former slave owners and their descendants, not the enslaved or their legal heirs.”</p>
<p>A prominent example is the so-called “Haitian Independence Debt” that burdened an independent Haiti with reparation payments to former slave owners in France. Another was the British government, which paid reparations totaling the equivalent of about $429 billion in 2021 to slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A 1791 depiction of fighting between French troops and Haitian revolutionaries." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Haitians had to pay for their independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/combat-entre-les-esclaves-et-larm%C3%A9e-fran%C3%A7aise-lors-de-la-news-photo/1291357942?adppopup=true">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the U.S., President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the “Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor within the District of Columbia” on April 16, 1862.</p>
<p>It gave former slave owners $300 per enslaved person set free.</p>
<p>The act also provided for an emigration incentive of $100 – around $2,683 in 2021 dollars – if the former enslaved person agreed to permanently leave the United States.</p>
<p>In contrast,“ Craemer wrote, "the formerly enslaved received nothing if they decided to stay in the United States.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522">There was a time reparations were actually paid out – just not to formerly enslaved people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Germany reparations to Holocaust survivors</h2>
<p>As a professor of political science who studies the relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pGUCXiUAAAAJ&hl=en">Bernd Reiter</a> has examined how Germany dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Instead of seeking to erase the Holocaust from its history, the German government has paid since the end of World War II the equivalent of $7 billion for Israel and $1 billion for the World Jewish Congress, an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations.</p>
<p>“The German government has worked hard to ensure remembrance, penance, recompense and justice,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-germany-atoned-for-the-holocaust-the-us-can-pay-reparations-for-slavery-119505">Reiter wrote</a>. “The United States, in contrast, has no official policy of atoning for slavery.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-germany-atoned-for-the-holocaust-the-us-can-pay-reparations-for-slavery-119505">If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206823/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Former enslaved persons have never received a dime for their labor. Nor have their descendants received reparations for the legacy of slavery.
Should the descendants be paid? By whom and how much?Howard Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059502023-05-31T12:40:05Z2023-05-31T12:40:05ZUS Army Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas’ journey from enslaver to Union officer to civil rights defender<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528104/original/file-20230524-24-o2jesj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=161%2C209%2C6107%2C6917&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, who fought for the Union army during the Civil War, stands in uniform for a photo.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-george-h-thomas-u-s-a-between-1860-and-1875-artist-news-photo/1410616141?adppopup=true">Heritage Images/ Hulton Archive</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Southern states <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-taking-down-confederate-memorials-is-only-a-first-step-78020">tear down Confederate statues</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-the-confederacy-are-slowly-coming-down-from-us-military-bases-3-essential-reads-205729">military removes the names of Confederate generals from bases</a>, the issue of how to remember the Civil War is increasingly prominent. </p>
<p>Are white Southerners condemned to think of themselves as the bad guys, the ones who were willing to destroy the Union to preserve slavery? Or are there other types of heritage in which they can take pride? </p>
<p>Growing up in Virginia in the 1970s, I was taught that Confederate generals like <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/julyaugust/feature/how-did-robert-e-lee-become-american-icon">Robert E. Lee</a> and <a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a57064/stonewall-jackson-descendants-open-letter/">Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson</a> were heroes who fought to defend their native state from Northern aggression. </p>
<p>As an adult, I read more widely about the Civil War and became fascinated with Union Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, who grew up in Virginia but joined the Union army. I’m a sociology scholar today. But, as a student of historical sociology, <a href="https://www.oupress.com/9780806141213/george-thomas/">I researched and wrote a biography</a> of Thomas to understand his decision.</p>
<p>While most people talk of the Civil War in terms of the North versus the South, in reality the conflict was between secessionists, who favored leaving the United States, and Unionists, who wanted to keep the country together. While most Southerners favored secession, <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-south-vs-the-south-9780195156294?cc=us&lang=en&">there were many Southern Unionists</a>. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of African American Southerners <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/slavery-during-the-civil-war/">supported the Union by escaping slavery</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war">serving in the Union army</a>. But there were thousands of <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-south-vs-the-south-9780195156294?">white Southerners who also supported the Union</a>. George H. Thomas, <a href="https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/blog/rock-of-chickamauga">known to history as “the Rock of Chickamauga,”</a> is the most prominent of them.</p>
<p>Born in Southampton, Virginia, in 1816 to a wealthy family of enslavers, Thomas entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when he was 20 years old and became a career military officer. He served during U.S. conflicts with Native Americans and with distinction in the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/mexican-american-war">Mexican-American War</a>, which ended in 1848.</p>
<p>When the Civil War broke out, nearly all the Southern career officers left the U.S. Army to serve in the Confederacy. But, as his adjutant and first biographer wrote in “<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044019661180&view=1up&seq=44">The Life of Major-General George H. Thomas</a>,” Thomas viewed his oath as an army officer to defend the Constitution as more binding than his feelings of loyalty to his native state. </p>
<h2>Led African American troops</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a Union Army uniform sits atop a horse in the middle of a field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529146/original/file-20230530-23-3lc1pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Union Gen. George H. Thomas, sitting atop a horse, surveys his surroundings during the Civil War, between 1861 and 1865.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2013648715/">Retrieved from the Library of Congress</a></span>
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<p>During the Civil War, Thomas first commanded a cavalry brigade in an attack of Virginia. He rose through the ranks to command a division, then a corps and, finally, an army. </p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/mill-springs">winning a battle at Mill Springs, Kentucky</a>, in 1862, he served in the campaigns to capture Nashville, Chattanooga and Atlanta. </p>
<p>Thomas’ most significant contribution was at the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/chch/index.htm">Battle of Chickamauga</a> in Catoosa and Walker counties, Georgia, fought Sept. 19-20, 1863, where he held the field with a hastily improvised force after the majority of the Union troops had been routed. His bravery and skill earned him the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga,” and his defense saved the Union force from destruction.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/william-t-sherman">Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman took his army</a> on its march through Georgia, Thomas stayed behind to defend Tennessee from the Confederates. At the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/decisive-battle-nashville">Battle of Nashville</a>, waged December 15-16, 1864, Thomas and the 72,000 soldiers under his command nearly destroyed a 23,000-man Confederate force, taking thousands of prisoners and leaving the states of the western Confederacy under Union control.</p>
<p>At Nashville, Thomas commanded thousands of African American troops. His colleagues in the military later recalled that <a href="https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofs00morg/page/22/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater">Thomas viewed African American troops as inferior soldiers</a>, not suited to offensive operations, and he relegated them to a part of his line that he thought would see no fighting. They attacked anyway, enduring huge losses in <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700606504/">repeated charges against Confederate entrenchments</a>. </p>
<p>Touring the battlefield after his victory, Thomas saw the African American dead piled in heaps before the Confederate fortifications. As a subordinate officer, Thomas J. Morgan, recalled, Thomas remarked, “<a href="https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofs00morg/page/48/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater">Gentlemen, the question is settled. The Negro will fight</a>.” </p>
<p>The sacrifices of African American soldiers at Nashville and elsewhere were a heroic and tragic act, with meaning and significance that went far beyond their effect on the opinion of a single person. But their sacrifice profoundly changed Thomas’ racial views. Having seen African Americans as living up to his ideal of soldierly virtue, he began to view them as full human beings who had earned the rights of citizenship. </p>
<h2>Enslaver turned civil rights defender</h2>
<p>During and after the war came the Reconstruction Era, the period from 1863 to 1877 when the U.S. government worked to integrate the formerly enslaved into society and unite the country, Thomas commanded the Union force in Tennessee. There he protected newly freed Blacks from racist local officials and the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/ku-klux-klan">Ku Klux Klan</a>.</p>
<p>Here, my biography traced new ground, drawing upon military records in the National Archives to discover Thomas’ role. He used military courts to enforce fair <a href="https://www.history.com/news/black-codes-reconstruction-slavery">labor contracts between white landowners and Black workers</a>. </p>
<p>And in 1867, Thomas used military courts to try former Confederate soldiers who were now members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist groups, on the grounds that they had violated the terms of the paroles they had signed at the time of the surrender of the Confederate armies. As “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant” indicate, <a href="https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=usg-volumes">Thomas used this tactic for several months</a> before one former Confederate challenged his arrest as unconstitutional. When the U.S. District Court judge ruled the prisoner must be released, Thomas wanted to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the attorney general’s office declined to support him.</p>
<p>When white local officials in Nashville began to <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/southern-black-codes.html">arrest African American adults and teenagers for vagrancy</a>, a legal maneuver that allowed the officials to hire out the formerly enslaved for forced labor on plantations, Thomas threatened the officials with military detention, and they let the prisoners go. He protected Black voters from <a href="https://time.com/6171019/reconstruction-black-economic-progress-history/">white violence at the polls</a> and continually lobbied his superiors in Washington to provide him with more troops and more authority to protect the freedmen. </p>
<p>Once a racist enslaver, he distinguished himself after the war in his active protection and promotion of the rights of formerly enslaved persons.</p>
<p>Thomas stands today as an example of the thousands of white Southerners who supported the Union during the Civil War and a rare example of a slave owner who changed his views on race and slavery. His military career demonstrated skill and bravery, but his true heroism was a moral one.</p>
<p>In my view, as the military assesses new names for bases formerly named after Confederate generals, Thomas’ name deserves consideration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205950/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Justin Einolf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Southerner, Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas was a racist enslaver before the Civil War. But he fought for the Union because he prioritized his oath to defend the Constitution over state interests.Christopher Justin Einolf, Associate Professor of Sociology, Northern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2052812023-05-29T12:29:09Z2023-05-29T12:29:09ZWhat really started the American Civil War?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527606/original/file-20230522-23-ijaoe1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C5770%2C4022&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 600,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/battle-of-kennesaw-mountain-royalty-free-illustration/1152759368?adppopup=true">Keith Lance/Digital Vision Vectors via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<blockquote>
<p><strong>What really started the Civil War? – Abbey, age 7, Stone Ridge, New York</strong></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/citizenship-test-questions-and-answers/#american-history-">The U.S. citizenship test</a> – which immigrants must pass before becoming citizens of the United States – has this question: “Name one problem that led to the Civil War.” It lists three possible correct answers: “slavery,” “economic reasons” and “states’ rights.” </p>
<p>But as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SsoLG_0AAAAJ&hl=en">a historian and professor</a> who studies slavery, Southern history and the American Civil War, I know there’s really only one correct answer: slavery. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="1862 photo of enslaved people and soldiers on a plantation, standing for the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527601/original/file-20230522-4578-n3onvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Enslaved people and soldiers on a South Carolina plantation in 1862.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-enslaved-people-and-soldiers-on-the-plantation-of-news-photo/1402910706">Henry P. Moore/LOC/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>White Southerners left the Union to establish a slave-holding republic; they were <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery-cause-civil-war.htm">dedicated to the preservation of slavery</a>. </p>
<p>What’s more, unlike slavery in the ancient world, slavery in the United States <a href="https://chssp.sf.ucdavis.edu/resources/curriculum/lessons/was-slavery-always-racial">was based on race</a>. By the time of the Civil War, Black people were the ones enslaved; white people were not. </p>
<p>Every American citizen, whether born in this country or naturalized, should understand that the conflict over slavery is what caused the Civil War. </p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>Slavery in the U.S. began at least as early as 1619, when a Portuguese ship brought about <a href="https://www.nps.gov/fomr/planyourvisit/first-african-landing.htm">20 enslaved African people to present-day Virginia</a>. It grew so quickly that by the time Colonists fought for their independence from England in 1775, slavery was <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2012/12/before-there-were-red-and-blue-states-there-were-free-states-and-slave-states/#:%7E">legal in all 13 Colonies</a>.</p>
<p>As the 19th century progressed, Northern states <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/freedom/history.html#:%7E">slowly abolished slavery</a>; but Southern states made it central to their economy. By 1860, nearly 4 million enslaved people lived in the South. </p>
<p>Increasingly, the North and South were at odds over the future of slavery. White Southerners believed slavery had to expand into new territories or it would die. In 1845, they pressured the federal government <a href="https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/annexation">to annex Texas, where slavery was legal</a>. They also supported an effort to <a href="https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1854OstendManifesto.pdf">purchase Cuba and add it as a slave state</a>. </p>
<p>In the North, people generally opposed the expansion of slavery into new territories, and many favored the gradual emancipation of enslaved people. A smaller group, known as abolitionists, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/abolitionist-movement">wanted slavery to end immediately</a>. </p>
<p>But even though many Northerners opposed the expansion of slavery, they <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2957.html">did not favor equal rights for Black people</a>. In most Northern states, segregation was rampant, Blacks were barred from voting and violence against them was common.</p>
<p>By the 1850s, it became more difficult for the federal government to satisfy either side. <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/compromise-of-1850#:%7E">The Compromise of 1850</a>, a series of bills that tried to solve the problem, pleased almost no one.</p>
<p>The publication of the 1852 novel “<a href="https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/harriet-beecher-stowe/uncle-toms-cabin/">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>” – about the pain and injustice inflicted on an enslaved man – turned Northerners against slavery even more. In the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford">1857 Dred Scott decision</a>, the Supreme Court ruled that enslaved people were not U.S. citizens, nor could Congress ban slavery in a federal territory. Two years later, the abolitionist John Brown <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/topics/john-browns-harpers-ferry-raid">attacked a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia</a>, in an unsuccessful attempt to supply weapons to enslaved people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dressed in a three-piece suit, Abraham Lincoln sits for a photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528041/original/file-20230524-21-b3wwpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A digitally restored photograph of President Abraham Lincoln, taken during the American Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/portrait-of-president-abraham-lincoln-royalty-free-image/640971707">National Archives/Stocktrek Images via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Lincoln becomes president, secession follows</h2>
<p>Amid this swirl of troubles, the presidential election of 1860 took place. A new political party, the Republican Party, was opposed to the spread of slavery throughout the western territories. With four major candidates running for president, <a href="https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/abraham-lincoln">Abraham Lincoln</a> won the electoral vote – but only 40% of the popular vote. </p>
<p>The election of a president from a party that opposed slavery jolted white Southerners to action. Less than two months after Lincoln won, South Carolina delegates, meeting in Charleston, decided to secede from the Union – that is, to <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp">formally withdraw membership in the United States</a>. </p>
<p>Other Southern states followed and said slavery was the primary reason for secession. Texas delegates wrote the abolition of slavery “would bring <a href="https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html">inevitable calamities upon both races and desolation</a>” in the slave states. The <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp">Mississippi secession document</a> said “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest in the world.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZKWrxZN5jmM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The hundreds of brutal, bloody battles of the Civil War took a terrible toll on the country.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Confederate supporters made their position clear</h2>
<p>The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, also said slavery was the reason for secession, and that Thomas Jefferson’s words in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">Declaration of Independence</a> – that all men are created equal – were wrong. </p>
<p>“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea,” <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech">Stephens told a crowd</a>. “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” </p>
<p>Although the evidence shows slavery caused the Civil War, some Southerners created a myth – <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause">the “Lost Cause</a>” – that transformed Confederate generals into heroes who were defending freedom. To some degree, that myth has, unfortunately, taken hold. Some schools are still <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/17/us/confederate-schools-trnd/index.html">named after Confederate generals</a>; <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-military-bases-honoring-confederate-figures-slated-to-get-new-names-/6641654.html">so are some military bases</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-the-confederacy-are-slowly-coming-down-from-us-military-bases-3-essential-reads-205729">although that is changing</a>. </p>
<p>It’s important to know the real reason for the Civil War so the country no longer celebrates historical figures who fought to establish a slave-holding republic.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to clarify that the colonies became states in the United States of America.</em></p>
<hr>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Gudmestad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There was one central reason the Civil War happened.Robert Gudmestad, Professor and Chair of History Department, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2034932023-04-20T12:41:21Z2023-04-20T12:41:21ZWhite Tennessee lawmakers speak out for insurrection in honoring Confederate history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521362/original/file-20230417-1000-2uvs3y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C15%2C5084%2C3794&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Tennessee State Capitol. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/drone-view-of-tennessee-state-capitol-news-photo/1449200189?adppopup=true">Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ghost of the Confederacy hangs heavily over the Tennessee Legislature. </p>
<p>Justin Jones, one of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/us/justin-pearson-justin-jones-tennessee.html">two Black members expelled</a> from the state’s House of Representatives in April 2023, had run afoul of House leadership before. In 2019, as a private citizen, he was arrested following his actions in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/aed77e8d3dcc4ae7ac7386a7df96b068">protesting a bust</a> in the state capitol <a href="https://www.newschannel5.com/news/the-history-of-the-nathan-bedford-forrest-busts-move-from-the-capitol-to-the-state-museum">honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest</a>, a Confederate general and later Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>While the expulsion of Jones and his colleague, Justin J. Pearson, riveted the nation’s attention, a curious and related event in the Legislature’s other branch, the Tennessee Senate, passed nearly unnoticed.</p>
<p>On Feb. 3, 2023, two state senators issued a formal proclamation commemorating April 2023 as <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2643/Proclamation.pdf?1681739436">Confederate History Month</a> and encouraging “all Tennesseans to increase their knowledge of this momentous era in the history of this State.” </p>
<p>One of the signers is <a href="https://www.capitol.tn.gov/senate/speaker.html">Senate Speaker Randy McNally</a>, who is also the state’s lieutenant governor; the other is <a href="https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/legislatorinfo/member.aspx?district=S17">Sen. Mark Pody from Lebanon</a>. Though not considered in legislative session and not listed on the Legislature’s website, the proclamation holds an official stature: It was issued on Senate stationery and stamped with the Tennessee state seal.</p>
<p>The proclamation’s wording closely follows that of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/07/virginia.confederate.history/index.html">a proclamation issued</a> by Virginia’s Gov. Robert McDonnell in April 2010, with one striking exception. McDonnell’s <a href="https://wamu.org/story/10/04/07/mcdonnell_apologizes_changes_language_of_confederate_history_month_proclamation/">proclamation in final form</a> included a paragraph, inserted after protests to an earlier version, stating “that it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war.” </p>
<p>The Tennessee proclamation, which includes eight introductory clauses celebrating “the cause of Southern liberty,” says nothing of slavery at all. Rather, it declares that Confederates conducted “a four-year heroic struggle for states’ rights, individual freedom, local government control, and a determined struggle for deeply held beliefs.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521603/original/file-20230418-22-930gfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A proclamation of the Tennessee Senate declares April 2023 Confederate History Month.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tennessee State Senate</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Safeguarding slavery</h2>
<p>As we <a href="https://history.utk.edu/people/daniel-feller/">historians of the Civil War</a> have tirelessly pointed out, the documentary record speaks clearly of the motive behind that “heroic struggle.” </p>
<p>Both official proceedings and private utterances prove abundantly that there was <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/reasons-secession">only one reason</a> to secede from the United States and create a new Confederacy. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/04/12/135353655/slavery-not-states-rights-was-civil-wars-cause">That was to safeguard racial slavery</a> from the threat posed by the election of an antislavery Northerner, Abraham Lincoln, as president of the United States.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Confederate-States-of-America">Tennessee seceded later</a> than other states, after the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter. Lincoln’s responding call for troops made plain that there would be a war and that Tennessee, like other fence-sitting Upper South states, would have to choose sides. </p>
<p>The record of the state’s reasons is easy to find, and would have been available to the authors of the recent proclamation. In 2021, the University of Tennessee Press published “<a href="https://utpress.org/title/tennessee-secedes/">Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History</a>.” It shows that in Tennessee, as elsewhere, the protection of slavery was the sole motive for secession.</p>
<p>In 1861, Gov. Isham Harris convened the state’s Legislature with <a href="https://civilwarcauses.org/harris.htm">a message denouncing the North’s</a> “systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question,” crowned by the insulting election of a president who “asserted the equality of the black with the white race.” </p>
<p>Harris went on:</p>
<p>“To evade the issue thus forced upon us at this time, without the fullest security for our rights, is, in my opinion, fatal to the institution of slavery forever. The time has arrived when the people of the South must prepare either to abandon or to fortify and maintain it. Abandon it, we cannot, interwoven as it is with our wealth, prosperity and domestic happiness.”</p>
<p>In all the deliberations that followed, no cause or grievance but slavery was mentioned.</p>
<p>Yet these basic facts go unacknowledged in a proclamation that boldly declares that knowledge of Confederate history is “vital to understanding who we are and what we are.”</p>
<p>Other omissions in the proclamation are equally curious. </p>
<p>Tennessee’s role in the Confederacy was uniquely conflicted. Thousands of citizens, especially in mountainous East Tennessee, <a href="https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/civil-war/">opposed secession</a>. Ignoring “local government control,” the state suppressed their dissent by force. </p>
<p>Some 50,000 Tennesseans, white and Black, spurned the Confederacy and <a href="https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2017/08/26/east-tennessee-civil-war-pro-union-divided/599123001/">fought for the United States</a> – more than from any other Confederate state. The proclamation silently erases not only their struggle and sacrifice but their very existence.</p>
<h2>‘Be not deceived by names’</h2>
<p>Whether the Confederacy should be celebrated or condemned depends inescapably on point of view. </p>
<p>The proclamation casts the Confederacy in the mode of the American Revolution. The picture it paints is of a noble, if unsuccessful, attempt to erect a new self-governing independent nation – ignoring the fact that the institution of human slavery was at its center, as the <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp">Confederate constitution</a> made clear. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A poster announcing the sale of an enslaved man named Dick and an enslaved girl named Lydia in Cross Plains, Tenn., dated June 18, 1857." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521371/original/file-20230417-16-gi4qzo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Broadside announcing the sale of an enslaved man named Dick and an enslaved girl named Lydia in Cross Plains, Tenn., dated June 18, 1857.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/broadside-announcing-the-sale-of-an-enslaved-man-named-dick-news-photo/1326279488?adppopup=true">Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet from another perspective, the Confederacy was nothing more than an armed mass rebellion against a legitimately elected government. </p>
<p>It was, ironically, a famous Tennessean, President Andrew Jackson, who had <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jack01.asp">warned would-be seceders</a> in an official proclamation in 1832: “Be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt?” </p>
<p><a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/july-4-1861-july-4th-message-congress">Lincoln labeled the Confederacy an “insurrection”</a> within the United States itself, which the government and loyal citizens had not only a right but a duty to put down. </p>
<p>In words that echo today, Lincoln also observed that if the United States won its battle against forcible dismemberment, “it will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-james-c-conkling">and pay the cost</a>.”</p>
<h2>Celebrating insurrection</h2>
<p>The old adage that the victors write history is true at least to this extent. Generally the American Revolutionaries are deemed patriot heroes rather than rebels and traitors because they won their war, and because the course of subsequent history appears to have vindicated their cause. </p>
<p>Yet many Confederate acolytes, the proclamation’s sponsors among them, seem to have difficulty confronting what the Confederacy actually stood for. Hence, citizens serving in government – who upon entering their offices take a solemn oath to <a href="https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/Apps/GeneralAssembly/About.aspx">uphold and defend the United States Constitution</a> and begin their daily sessions by pledging allegiance to “<a href="https://www.legion.org/flag/pledge">one Nation indivisible</a>” – chose to officially exalt a failed attempt to overthrow that Constitution and dismember the nation that it bound together. </p>
<p>Under a statute enacted in 2021, Tennessee public school teachers are <a href="https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/legal/Prohibited%20Concepts%20in%20Instruction%20Rule%207.29.21%20FINAL.pdf">barred from using</a> instructional materials “promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government.” </p>
<p>No such prohibition applies to state legislators.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Feller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An official proclamation issued by two Tennessee lawmakers commemorates Confederate History Month, fails to mention slavery and instead honors what it calls a “heroic struggle for states’ rights.”Daniel Feller, Emeritus Professor of History, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008132023-03-20T12:42:57Z2023-03-20T12:42:57ZSecession is here: States, cities and the wealthy are already withdrawing from America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515905/original/file-20230316-20-kjjhgl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2117%2C1406&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Acts of secession are happening across the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/poster-map-united-states-of-america-with-royalty-free-illustration/610663444?phrase=U.S.%20map&adppopup=true">Vector Illustration/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, wants a “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-refuses-back-national-divorce-proposal/story?id=97390020">national divorce</a>.” In her view, another Civil War is inevitable unless red and blue states form separate countries. </p>
<p>She has <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/texas-republican-bill-secession-referendum-1234691622/">plenty of company</a> on the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/21/secession-donald-trump-449348">right</a>, where a host of others – <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/12/13/how-seriously-should-we-take-talk-of-us-state-secession/">52% of Trump voters</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-wants-parts-of-the-country-to-secede--at-least-in-their-minds/2020/10/22/7f4bc048-148f-11eb-ad6f-36c93e6e94fb_story.html">Donald Trump himself</a> and <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/are-texas-republicans-serious-about-secession/">prominent Texas Republicans</a> – have endorsed various forms of secession in recent years. Roughly <a href="https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/new-initiative-explores-deep-persistent-divides-between-biden-and-trump-voters/">40% of Biden voters</a> have fantasized about a national divorce as well. Some on the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/bluexit-blue-states-exit-trump-red-america">left</a>
urge a domestic breakup so that a new <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/secession-constitution-elections-senate/">egalitarian nation</a> might be, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “brought forth on this continent.” </p>
<p>The American Civil War was a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWpe3lsWZpQ">national trauma</a> precipitated by the secession of 11 Southern states over slavery. It is, therefore, understandable that many <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/states-disunion-secession-movements-richard-kreitner/673191/">pundits and commentators</a> would <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/sean-hannity-marjorie-taylor-greene-secessionist">weigh in</a> about the <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3869319-us-secession-is-a-great-idea-for-russia/">legality, feasibility and wisdom</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/05/opinion/national-divorce-civil-war.html">of secession</a> when others clamor for divorce. </p>
<p>But all this secession talk misses a key point that every troubled couple knows. Just as there are ways to withdraw from a marriage before any formal divorce, there are also ways to exit a nation before officially seceding.</p>
<p>I have <a href="https://communication.cofc.edu/about/faculty-staff-listing/lee-michael.php">studied secession</a> for 20 years, and I think that it is not just a “<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3884444-what-if-marjorie-taylor-greenes-secessionist-fantasy-came-true/">what if?</a>” scenario anymore. In “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/we-are-not-one-people-9780190876517?lang=en&cc=us">We Are Not One People: Secession and Separatism in American Politics Since 1776</a>,” my co-author and I go beyond narrow discussions of secession and the Civil War to frame secession as an extreme end point on a scale that includes various acts of <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674276604">exit</a> that have already taken place across the U.S. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A blond woman in a pink jacket stands in front of many lights and a marquee that says 'Marjorie Taylor Greene'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515909/original/file-20230316-26-oqmrry.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants red and blue states to separate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-speaks-during-the-annual-news-photo/1470988997?phrase=Marjorie%20Taylor%20Greene&adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Scaled secession</h2>
<p>This scale begins with smaller, targeted exits, like a person getting out of jury duty, and progresses to include the larger ways that communities refuse to comply with state and federal authorities. </p>
<p>Such refusals could involve legal maneuvers like <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/nullification-definition-and-examples-5203930">interposition</a>, in which a community delays or constrains the enforcement of a law it opposes, or <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315081595-5/overturned-america-nullification-brown-board-education-albert-samuels">nullification</a>, in which a community explicitly declares a law to be null and void within its borders. At the end of the scale, there’s secession.</p>
<p>From this wider perspective, it is clear that many acts of departure – call them secession lite, de facto secession or soft separatism – are occurring right now. Americans have responded to increasing polarization by exploring the gradations between soft separatism and hard secession. </p>
<p>These escalating exits make sense in a <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-Were-Polarized/Ezra-Klein/9781476700366">polarized nation</a> whose citizens are sorting themselves into <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo27527354.html">like-minded neighbhorhoods</a>. When compromise is elusive and coexistence is unpleasant, citizens have three options to get their way: Defeat the other side, eliminate the other side or get away from the other side.</p>
<p>Imagine a national law; it could be a mandate that citizens brush their teeth twice a day or a statute criminalizing texting while driving. Then imagine that a special group of people did not have to obey that law. </p>
<p>This quasi-secession can be achieved in several ways. Maybe this special group moves “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILcUScfebJ4">off the grid</a>” into the boondocks where they could text and drive without fear of oversight. Maybe this special group wields political power and can buy, bribe or lawyer their way out of any legal jam. Maybe this special group has persuaded a powerful authority, say Congress or the Supreme Court, to grant them unique <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/6/16741840/religious-liberty-history-law-masterpiece-cakeshop">legal exemptions</a>.</p>
<p>These are hypothetical scenarios, but not imaginary ones. When groups exit public life and its civic duties and burdens, when they live under their own sets of rules, when they do not have to live with fellow citizens they have not chosen or listen to authorities they do not like, they have already seceded.</p>
<h2>Schools to taxes</h2>
<p>Present-day America offers numerous hard examples of soft separatism. </p>
<p>Over the past two decades, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/27/16004084/school-segregation-evolution">scores</a> of wealthy white communities have separated from more diverse school districts. Advocates cite local control to justify these acts of school secession. But the result is the creation of <a href="https://harvardcrcl.org/opting-out-school-district-secession-and-local-control/">parallel</a> school districts, both relatively homogeneous but vastly different in racial makeup and economic background.</p>
<p>Several prominent district exits have occurred in the South – places like <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/05/resegregation-baton-rouge-public-schools/589381/">St. George, Louisiana</a> – but instances from <a href="https://edbuild.org/content/fractured#intro">northern Maine to Southern California</a> show that school splintering <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111060299/school-segregation-report">is happening nationwide</a>. </p>
<p>As one reporter <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/6/20853091/school-secession-racial-segregation-louisiana-alabama">wrote</a>, “If you didn’t want to attend school with certain people in your district, you just needed to find a way to put a district line between you and them.”</p>
<p>Many other examples of legalized separatism revolve around taxes. Disney World, for example, was classified as a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/business/desantis-disney-world-district.html">special tax district</a>” in Florida in 1967. These special districts are functionally separate local governments and can provide public services and build and maintain their own infrastructure. </p>
<p>The company has saved millions by avoiding typical zoning, permitting and inspection processes for decades, although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-01/what-did-disney-actually-lose-from-its-florida-battle-with-desantis">has recently challenged</a> Disney’s special designation. Disney was only one of 1,800 special tax districts in Florida; there are <a href="https://gfrc.uic.edu/special-districts-americas-shadow-governments/">over 35,000</a> in the nation.</p>
<p>Jeff Bezos paid no federal income taxes in 2011. Elon Musk paid <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax">almost none</a> in 2018. Tales of wealthy individuals <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119412217/how-the-ultrawealthy-devise-ways-to-not-pay-their-share-of-taxes">avoiding taxes</a> are as common as stories of rich Americans buying <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-affluenza-texas-case-20131213-story.html">their way out</a> of jail. “Wealthier Americans,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/20/magazine/secession-of-the-successful.html">Robert Reich lamented</a> as far back as the early 1990s, “have been withdrawing into their own neighborhoods and clubs for generations.” Reich worried that a “new secession” allowed the rich to “inhabit a different economy from other Americans.” </p>
<p>Some of the nation’s wealthiest citizens pay an <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax">effective tax rate</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57383869">close to zero</a>. As one investigative reporter put it, the ultrawealthy “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57383869">sidestep the system in an entirely legal way</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A lot of people applauding as they sit at a meeting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515921/original/file-20230316-20-londr7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spectators applaud after the Buckingham County Board of Supervisors unanimously votes to pass a Second Amendment sanctuary resolution at a meeting in Buckingham, Va., Dec. 9, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/GunSanctuariesVirginia/dfa46843d6df44f799a5a408248a4f0a/photo?Query=Second%20Amendment%20Sanctuary&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=14&currentItemNo=12">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>One nation, divisible</h2>
<p>Schools and taxes are just a start. </p>
<p>Eleven states dub themselves “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/politics/missouri-gun-law.html">Second Amendment sanctuaries</a>” and refuse to enforce federal gun restrictions. Movements aiming to carve off rural, more politically conservative portions of blue states <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2023/01/10/county-secession-local-efforts-to-redraw-political-borders/">are growing</a>; 11 counties in Eastern Oregon <a href="https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/02/15/idaho-house-passes-nonbinding-measure-calling-for-formal-greater-idaho-talks/">support seceding</a> and <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/campaign-to-join-idaho-gains-support-of-two-more-oregon-counties/">reclassifying themselves</a> as “Greater Idaho,” a move that Idaho’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/greater-idaho-movement-lawmakers-house-rural-oregon-counties-join-state-2023-2">state government supports</a>. </p>
<p>Hoping to become a separate state independent of Chicago’s political influence, over two dozen rural Illinois counties have passed <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-politics/27-counties-in-illinois-have-passed-referendums-to-explore-seceding-from-state-heres-where/2993937/%22">pro-secession referendums</a>. Some <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/are-texas-republicans-serious-about-secession/">Texas</a> Republicans back “Texit,” where the state becomes an independent nation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.vermontpublic.org/programs/2017-11-03/what-would-it-look-like-if-vermont-seceded">Separatist ideas</a> come from the Left, too. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/calexit-explainer-california-plans-to-secede-2016-11">Cal-exit</a>,” a plan for California to leave the union after 2016, was the most acute recent attempt at secession. </p>
<p>And separatist acts have reshaped life and law in many states. Since 2012, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/07/us/20230306-oklahoma-marijuana-vote-five-charts-dg/index.html">21 states</a> have legalized marijuana, which is <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/20/17938372/marijuana-legalization-federal-prohibition-drug-scheduling-system">federally illegal</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/15/red-states-send-migrants-blue-states-sanctuary-cities-are-crucial/">Sanctuary cities and states</a> have emerged since 2016 to combat aggressive federal immigration laws and policies. Some <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/dozens-elected-prosecutors-say-will-refuse-prosecute-abortion-care-rcna35305">prosecutors and judges refuse</a> to prosecute women and medical providers for newly illegal abortions in some states. </p>
<p>Estimates vary, but some Americans are increasingly opting out of hypermodern, hyperpolarized life entirely. “Intentional communities,” rural, sustainable, cooperative communes like <a href="https://www.ic.org/directory/east-wind-community/">East Wind in the Ozarks</a>, are, as The New York Times reported in 2020, proliferating “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/t-magazine/intentional-communities.html">across the country</a>.”</p>
<p>In many ways, America is already broken apart. When secession is portrayed in its strictest sense, as a group of people declaring independence and taking a portion of a nation as they depart, the discussion is myopic, and current acts of exit hide in plain sight. When it comes to secession, the question is not just “What if?” but “What now?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Secession talk evokes fears of a second Civil War. But one scholar says secession is already happening in the US under a variety of guises.Michael J. Lee, Professor of Communication, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1975232023-01-20T13:38:15Z2023-01-20T13:38:15ZSouth Carolina’s execution by firing squad: The last reenactment of the Civil War?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505229/original/file-20230118-16-f5hkve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C9%2C6311%2C4482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An illustration of a deserter being executed by a firing squad at the Federal Camp in Alexandria during the American civil war. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/illustration-of-a-deserter-being-executed-by-a-firing-squad-news-photo/106416800?phrase=firing%20squad&adppopup=true">Kean Collection/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Americans have an appetite for reenacting the past, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/civil-war-reenactments-were-thing-even-during-civil-war-180967405/">especially the battles of the U.S. Civil War</a>, which took place from 1861 to 1865. Every year, in an effort to relive something of the nation’s bloodiest war, thousands don blue and gray uniforms and gather on fields where the distant echoes of war have since faded.</p>
<p>There are dozens of Civil War reenactments <a href="https://www.milsurpia.com/reenactment-groups/civil-war-reenactors">in the U.S. every year</a>. Participants take them very seriously. Food, uniforms, even the smells of war – all are <a href="https://www.civilwaracademy.com/civil-war-food">recreated to lend authenticity to the events</a>. Only the bullets and shells are not “real.”</p>
<p>Now, the U.S. reenactment community has a potential new member: the state of South Carolina. </p>
<p>That’s courtesy of the <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/05/17/south-carolina-becomes-fourth-state-to-approve-firing-squads/">state’s decision in 2021</a> to allow its inmates on death row the option of execution by firing squad. With that move, South Carolina has elected to deploy a form of capital punishment not used in the state since the Civil War.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two chairs in a room, one shrouded in a cover and the other with straps on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505230/original/file-20230118-24-yrr906.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DeathPenaltySouthCarolina/347e08524001475dbde099d25b3bc068/photo?Query=South%20Carolina%20firing%20squad&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=18&currentItemNo=2">South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A target placed over his heart</h2>
<p>The reason South Carolina adopted the firing squad is straightforward: The state apparently has <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2021/05/19/with-lethal-injections-harder-to-come-by-some-states-are-turning-to-firing-squads">trouble securing enough lethal injection drugs</a> to execute prisoners. That leaves the electric chair as an option. And now the firing squad.</p>
<p>The firing squad method has yet to be used and is currently under <a href="https://www.wbtw.com/news/state-regional-news/south-carolina-supreme-court-to-take-up-legality-of-using-electric-chair-firing-squad-in-state/">appeal at the state Supreme Court</a>. I am an expert witness in this case and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-smell-of-battle-the-taste-of-siege-9780190658526?lang=en&cc=us">a historian</a> <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/smith_m_mark.php">of the Civil War</a>. </p>
<p>South Carolina’s Department of Corrections <a href="https://www.live5news.com/2022/03/18/firing-squad-now-execution-option-south-carolina/">has drafted</a> <a href="https://time.com/6170814/south-carolina-firing-squad-richard-moore-death-penalty/">firing squad protocols</a>. The firing squad will be made up of three members drawn from prison staff. They will be behind a wall, all three of their rifles loaded with live ammunition and aimed at the inmate through an opening in the wall. </p>
<p>After entering the chamber, the inmate will be strapped into a chair, a hood placed over his head, and a target placed over his heart. </p>
<p>At this point, the warden will read the execution order aloud. Members of the squad will then fire their rifles. After the inmate is declared dead, witnesses leave.</p>
<h2>Exclusively military punishment</h2>
<p>Firing squad executions are extremely rare in U.S. history. </p>
<p>Only four states currently have it on the books: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/south-carolina-institutes-firing-squad-executions-2022-03-18/">South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah</a>. Only Utah has used it as an actual execution method. Since 1976, just three executions have been <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution">carried out by firing squad</a> in Utah.</p>
<p>Execution by firing squad has, in fact, never been common in U.S. history. While the term “firing squad” can be found in U.S. newspapers before the Civil War, the phrase was usually used to describe a different custom, akin to a salute, when guns were fired into the air to <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/624044450/?terms=%22firing%20squad%22&match=1">honor an individual of note after death</a>.</p>
<p>The use of the firing squad was also rare during the Civil War. It was used principally to punish soldiers who deserted from either the Union or Confederate Army.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large firing squad executing five men sitting at the foot of their coffins." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505236/original/file-20230118-15-hq1zlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Execution of five V Corps deserters, Army of the Potomac, Virginia, Aug. 29, 1863.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/41094">House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to Thomas P. Lowry and Lewis Laska’s 2009 study “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/303495225?oclcNum=303495225">Confederate Death Sentences: A Reference Guide</a>,” of the 26,015 Union soldiers tried for desertion, approximately 1,243 of them, or 4.8%, were sentenced to die by firing squad; 12.4% of Confederate soldiers tried for desertion in the Army of Northern Virginia were sentenced to death by this method. </p>
<p>Besides the executions in Utah, there are no instances of the firing squad being used in the U.S. following the Civil War. It was an exclusively military form of punishment. </p>
<p>Because the firing squad was designed to deter deserters during the war, it was often carried out in a ritualized manner. It was almost always done publicly, and it was done with the explicit intention of instilling terror.</p>
<h2>Striking similarities then and now</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/604357565/?terms=%22firing%20squad%22&match=1">similarities between</a> <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/military-executions-during-the-civil-war/">Civil War firing squads</a> and those proposed by the state of South Carolina are striking.</p>
<p>Like the guards drawn from the prison, the Civil War firing squad was selected from the ranks of soldiers. They typically carried out the punishment at the command of an assistant provost marshal or provost marshal, who is an army officer in charge of the military police. </p>
<p>The firing squad usually stood several feet from the condemned soldier and aimed at a target placed over his heart. In most cases, a blindfold was placed over the condemned soldier’s eyes and his hands were tied.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chair into which someone can be strapped, with sandbags piled on either side of it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505234/original/file-20230118-8082-nvypug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This June 18, 2010, photo shows the firing squad execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DeathPenalty/c6960e67c8a04f899f463f6883a96fa7/photo?Query=Utah%20firing%20squad&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=285&currentItemNo=15">Trent Nelson/Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘The awful ceremony’</h2>
<p>There were, of course, differences between then and now. Not all firing squad soldiers during the Civil War had live ammunition. <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/511702577/?terms=%22firing%20squad%22&match=1">One rifle could be blank</a>, sparing even these war-hardened soldiers the knowledge of having killed an unarmed man. </p>
<p>In general, the firing squad took place in a public location, like a road, a town square or a battlefield. Plainly, this is not the case in the proposed South Carolina blueprint, although reporters were at the scene of Civil War executions and a member of the press will be allowed to witness firing squad executions in South Carolina.</p>
<p>Some comparisons remain elusive. Will the South Carolina firing squad offer an immediate, painless death? We know that Civil War firing squads <a href="http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/december/execution-deserter.htm">were not always immediately effective</a>. For example, according to an 1864 report of a firing squad execution published in the <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/223488798/?terms=%22firing%20squad%22&match=1">Vicksburg Herald</a>, one soldier from the 49th Regiment Colored Infantry “had to be dispatched by pistol, immediate death not resulting from the wounds by the muskets.”</p>
<p>Will the inmate suffer psychologically and emotionally when executed in South Carolina? Again, the Civil War provides clues. <a href="http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/september/execution-deserters.htm">Harper’s Weekly</a> said of an 1863 mass firing squad execution: “They all suffered terribly mentally, and as they marched to their own funeral they staggered with mortal agony like a drunken man.”</p>
<p>Witnesses could also find the spectacle difficult to watch. According to the
<a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/591871968/?terms=%22firing%20squad%22&match=1">Louisville Daily Journal</a> in 1863, “The scene was now becoming painful to the spectators, and many turned away, not wishing to witness more of the awful ceremony.” Sometimes soldiers charged with firing the deadly rounds <a href="http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/december/execution-deserter.htm">deliberately missed their target</a>, the burden of killing in this fashion proving too much.</p>
<p>Civil War reenactors know the limits of what they do. They do not attempt to recreate the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/confederate-submarine-hunley-sinking-mystery-civil-war">fatal 1864 sinking of the Confederate H.L. Hunley submarine</a> in Charleston Harbor; neither do they attempt to recreate deadly monthlong sieges, such as the one at <a href="https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/historyculture/vicksburgsiege.htm">Vicksburg in 1863</a>. Nor do they reenact firing squad executions.</p>
<p>Yet the state of South Carolina is willing to quite literally reenact a practice from some of the country’s bloodiest history – a practice that some soldiers, even in the middle of the greatest carnage this nation has experienced, found themselves unable to engage in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark M. Smith is affiliated with Justice 360. I served as an expert witness for the organization and submitted an affidavit in a case heard by the SC Supreme Court.</span></em></p>South Carolina has had trouble securing enough lethal injection drugs for executions. So it has turned to an old form of killing: the firing squad, last used in the Civil War.Mark M. Smith, Carolina Distinguished Professor of History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1948962022-12-05T13:26:27Z2022-12-05T13:26:27ZGen. Ulysses S. Grant’s pending promotion sheds new light on his overlooked fight for equal rights after the Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498586/original/file-20221201-16851-brd9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=81%2C661%2C2939%2C3112&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">General Grant stands in front of his campaign tent at his headquarters in Virginia in 1865.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-grant-stands-in-front-of-his-campaign-tent-at-his-news-photo/515359842?phrase=ulysses%20s%20grant&adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tucked away in an amendment to the <a href="https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy23_ndaa_bill_text.pdf">FY2023 U.S. defense authorization bill</a> is a rare instance of congressional bipartisanship and a tribute to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. </p>
<p>If approved, the measure would posthumously promote Grant to the rank of General of the Armies of the U.S., making him only the third person – along with <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/macarthur-general-john-j-pershing/">John J. Pershing</a> and <a href="https://armyhistory.org/general-of-the-armies-of-the-united-states-george-washington/">George Washington</a> – to be awarded the nation’s highest military honor.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.history.msstate.edu/directory/aem231">Executive Director</a> of the <a href="https://www.usgrantlibrary.org/">Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library</a>, I believe that the promotion would be much more than a symbolic nod to a great military general. Rather, it would highlight the overlooked legacy of a man who fought to end the last vestiges of slavery. </p>
<h2>Outbreak of Civil War</h2>
<p>During the Civil War, Grant rose to fame as a decisive leader who was willing to doggedly pursue Confederate armies and avoid retreat at all costs. He first gained his reputation for tenacity with Union victories at <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/shiloh#:%7E:text=Hardin%20County%2C%20TN%20%7C%20Apr%206,continent%20up%20to%20that%20date.">Shiloh</a>, <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/chattanooga">the Battles for Chattanooga</a> and <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/vicksburg">the Siege of Vicksburg</a>. </p>
<p>Like most white northerners, Grant signed up to <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/ulysses-s-grant">fight for the Union</a> – not for emancipation. </p>
<p>But by 1862, the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery-cause-civil-war.htm">freedom of enslaved African Americans</a> had become vital to the Union war strategy, if not yet its cause.</p>
<p>A year before President Abraham Lincoln signed in 1863 <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation">the Emancipation Proclamation</a> that freed enslaved people in the Confederate states, Grant oversaw the establishment of refugee, or <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/grants-contraband-conundrum/?searchResultPosition=1">contraband camps</a>, throughout the <a href="https://repository.upenn.edu/hist_digital/1/">Mississippi Valley</a>. Those camps provided basic housing, food and work for Black men and women who had fled from slavery.</p>
<p>Grant also administered the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/article.html">enlistment of African American men</a> into United States Colored Troops units during <a href="https://www.nps.gov/vick/learn/historyculture/african-americans-and-the-campaign.htm">the Vicksburg campaign</a>. </p>
<p>In March 1864, <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/lincoln/lincolns-generals">Lincoln appointed Grant</a> to the rank of lieutenant general and ordered him to take on the Confederate Army in Virginia, a task at which numerous other Union leaders had failed.</p>
<p>At this point during the war, Grant assumed the role of chief strategist for the entire Union war effort. It took the next 13 months of fighting <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/overland-campaign-1864">during the Overland campaign</a> before <a href="https://loc.gov/exhibits/civil-war-in-america/biographies/robert-e-lee.html">Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered</a> to Grant at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Appomattox-Court-House">Appomattox</a> on April 9, 1865. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white man dressed in a dark military uniform stands at a table with another white man dressed in a military uniform." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498570/original/file-20221201-6286-e8f6w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this illustration, Gen. Ulysses S, Grant, left, accepts the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/robert-e-lee-surrenders-to-general-u-s-grant-royalty-free-illustration/112873439?phrase=ulysses%20s%20grant%20robert%20lee&adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>After the Federal victory, many <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-grant-was-the-great-hero-of-the-civil-war-but-lost-favor-with-historians/2014/04/24/62f5439e-bf53-11e3-b574-f8748871856a_story.html">Americans hailed Grant</a> as the man who saved the Union. </p>
<p>But Grant was magnanimous in victory. </p>
<p>Multiple times during the war <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/gentlemans-agreement-ended-civil-war-180954810/">he honored the dignity</a> of his defeated adversaries, most famously at Appomattox, where he did not require Lee to hand over his sword, as usually required. Grant also allowed Confederate officers to keep their sidearms and horses. </p>
<p>Lee appreciated <a href="https://npg.si.edu/blog/lee-surrendering-grant-appomattox">Grant’s actions</a>, remarking: “This will have the best possible effect upon the men … it will be very gratifying, and will do much toward conciliating our people.” </p>
<h2>Impact of the ‘Lost Cause’</h2>
<p>But after the war, the conciliatory feelings vanished. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/the-lost-causes-long-legacy/613288/">Southern partisans constructed</a> the narrative of the “Lost Cause.” It held that the root of the Civil War was not slavery, but <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/states-rights">the rights of states to control</a> their own destinies. It further held that the Union victory had nothing to do with Confederate character or leadership, but rather the Union’s sheer numbers and superior resources.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.salon.com/2011/05/01/joan_waugh_grant/">this Lost Cause narrative</a>, Grant was seen as a bumbling butcher devoid of any meaningful strategic vision, who succeeded only by mercilessly throwing more soldiers at his enemy. It also revived <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-04-25/legacy-of-ulysses-s-grant-complicated-200-years-after-birth">the old rumors</a> of his excessive drinking. </p>
<p>In this story line, Grant’s foil was always the courtly gentleman, Robert E. Lee. The hagiography of Lee demanded <a href="https://www.salon.com/2011/05/01/joan_waugh_grant/">Grant’s inferiority</a>. </p>
<p>By the early 20th century, the Lost Cause was no longer isolated in the South and had spread across America. Crowds flocked to see <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation">the racist anti-Reconstruction “Birth of a Nation”</a> in movie theaters, and during the World War I rush to build military bases, the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/the-lost-causes-long-legacy/613288/">Army named ten of them after Confederate generals</a>. </p>
<h2>President Grant’s fight for equality</h2>
<p>Grant served as <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ulysses-s-grant/">U.S. president from 1869 to 1877</a> during a time when white southerners proved hostile toward <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reconstruction-civil-rights-during-reconstruction/">federal Reconstruction measures</a> that sought equal rights for recently freed enslaved people. </p>
<p>Grant saw his role of enforcing these policies as an extension of his wartime duty and necessary to <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-short-overview-of-the-reconstruction-era-and-ulysses-s-grant-s-presidency.htm">protect the gains of the Union victory</a>, especially the newly established rights for African Americans. </p>
<p>He used the resources of the federal government to <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/grant-kkk/">crush the Ku Klux Klan</a>, established the Department of Justice to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/created-150-years-ago-justice-departments-first-mission-was-protect-black-rights-180975232/">investigate civil rights abuses</a> and signed <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilRightsAct1875.htm#:%7E:text=The%20bill%20guaranteed%20all%20citizens,schools%2C%20churches%2C%20and%20cemeteries.">the Civil Rights Act of 1875</a>. </p>
<h2>Grant’s latest cause</h2>
<p>In recent years, the American public has questioned the Lost Cause and taken steps to mitigate its pervasiveness throughout the U.S. </p>
<p>Southerners themselves have chosen to remove <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970610428/nearly-100-confederate-monuments-removed-in-2020-report-says-more-than-700-remai">Confederate leaders</a> from town squares and imagery from <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2021/01/11/its-a-great-day-mississippi-raises-new-state-flag-after-126-years/">state flags</a>. The U.S. Army has established a <a href="https://www.thenamingcommission.gov/names">Naming Commission</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-moves-to-rename-army-bases-honoring-confederate-generals-who-fought-to-defend-slavery-183862">rebrand Confederate-named bases</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Construction workers use heavy-duty chains to remove a statue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445492/original/file-20220209-15-6ngyxb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee is lifted off its pedestal in Charlottesville, Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/statue-of-confederate-general-robert-e-lee-located-in-news-photo/1233936650?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>It is telling, too, that Grant’s Presidential Library is now located in Mississippi, a Deep South state he once conquered.</p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether the request made to elevate Grant’s rank by U.S. Senators <a href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/">Sherrod Brown</a> of Ohio, a Democrat, and <a href="https://www.blunt.senate.gov/">Roy Blunt</a> of Missouri, a Republican – along with <a href="https://wagner.house.gov/about/meet-ann">GOP U.S Rep. Ann Wagner</a> – will be finally approved by Congress as part of <a href="https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy23_ndaa_bill_text.pdf">the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act</a>. </p>
<p>Either way, in my view, a thoughtful reconsideration of Grant’s wartime and post-war contributions is long overdue. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to clarify Confederate imagery removed from state flags.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Marshall is affiliated with Ulysses S. Grant Association</span></em></p>Known as the military leader who saved America, Ulysses S. Grant left a legacy of fighting for the rights of enslaved people during and after the Civil War.Anne Marshall, Associate Professor of History, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1937022022-11-14T14:18:48Z2022-11-14T14:18:48ZWhy is turkey the main dish on Thanksgiving?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494232/original/file-20221108-8958-h84j70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=86%2C0%2C4706%2C3025&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Turkeys have always been a fixture in the holiday's marketing. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/penny-postcard-to-convey-happy-thanksgiving-wishes-from-a-news-photo/550151625?phrase=painting%20turkey&adppopup=true">Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why did turkey become the national Thanksgiving go-to dish? Gianna, age 10, Phoenix, Arizona</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Have you ever wondered why Thanksgiving revolves around turkey and not ham, chicken, venison, beef or corn? </p>
<p>Almost <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/society/articles-reports/2021/11/24/thanksgiving-food-debates-poll">9 in 10</a> Americans eat turkey during this festive meal, whether it’s roasted, deep-fried, grilled or cooked in any other way for the occasion.</p>
<p>You might believe it’s because of what the Pilgrims, a year after they landed in what’s now the state of Massachusetts, and their <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-wampanoag-side-of-the-first-thanksgiving-story">Indigenous Wampanoag guests</a> ate during their first thanksgiving feast in 1621. Or that it’s because <a href="https://www.almanac.com/wild-turkey-history-all-american-bird">turkey is originally from the Americas</a>. </p>
<p>But it has more to do with how Americans observed the holiday in the late 1800s than which poultry the Pilgrims ate while celebrating their bounty in 1621.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two people dressed as Pilgrims sit atop a giant turkey float that is wearing a Pilgrim hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494454/original/file-20221109-2910-iq7eit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A giant Pilgrim-themed turkey float is a fixture in New York’s annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-thanksgiving-turkey-makes-its-way-during-the-81st-news-photo/78069773?phrase=turkey%20macy%27s%20parade&adppopup=true">Hiroko Masuike/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Did they or didn’t they eat it?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcmassbookdig.mourtsrelationor00brad/?st=pdf&pdfPage=189">only firsthand record</a> of what the Pilgrims ate at the first thanksgiving feast comes from Edward Winslow. He noted that the Wampanoag leader, Massasoit, arrived with 90 men, and the two communities feasted together for three days. </p>
<p>Winslow wrote little about the menu, aside from mentioning five deer that the Wampanoag brought and that the meal included “fowle,” which could have been any number of wild birds found in the area, including ducks, geese and turkeys.</p>
<p>Historians do know that important ingredients of today’s traditional dishes were not available during that first Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>That includes potatoes and green beans. The likely absence of wheat flour and the <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/40532/50517_aer382a.pdf?v=0">scarcity of sugar</a> in New England at the time ruled out pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. <a href="https://aihd.ku.edu/foods/squash.html">Some sort of squash</a>, a staple of Native American diets, was almost certainly served, <a href="https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/arts-culture/2021-11-24/heres-what-was-served-at-the-real-first-thanksgiving">along with corn</a> and shellfish.</p>
<h2>A resurrected tradition</h2>
<p><a href="https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/history/profile/troy-bickham/">Historians like me</a> who have studied the history of food have found that most modern Thanksgiving traditions began in the mid-19th century, more than two centuries after the Pilgrims’ first harvest celebration.</p>
<p>The reinvention of the Pilgrims’ celebration as a national holiday was largely the work of <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sarah-hale">Sarah Hale</a>. Born in New Hampshire in 1784, as a young widow she published poetry to earn a living. Most notably, she wrote the nursery rhyme “<a href="https://www.almanac.com/sarah-josepha-hale-godmother-thanksgiving">Mary Had a Little Lamb</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman dressed as a colonial-era settler grabs a live turkey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494237/original/file-20221108-8962-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turkeys were a mainstay of colonial American cooking, including in the South – as this Yorktown, Virginia, historical reenactment suggests.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/virginia-yorktown-victory-center-tidewater-virginia-farm-news-photo/590648857?adppopup=true">Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1837, Hale became the editor of the popular magazine <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=godeylady">Godey’s Lady’s Book</a>. Fiercely religious and family-focused, it crusaded for the creation of an annual national holiday of “Thanksgiving and Praise” commemorating the Pilgrims’ thanksgiving feast.</p>
<p>Hale and her colleagues leaned on 1621 lore for historical justification. Like many of her contemporaries, she assumed the Pilgrims ate turkey at their first feast because of the <a href="https://www.mass.gov/service-details/learn-about-turkeys">abundance of edible wild turkeys in New England</a>. </p>
<p>This campaign took decades, partly due to a lack of enthusiasm among white Southerners. Many of them considered <a href="https://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/nov02/thanks-early.html">an earlier celebration among Virginia colonists</a> in honor of supply ships that arrived at Jamestown in 1610 to be the more important precedent.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/expulsion_cases/CivilWar_Expulsion.htm">absence of Southerners serving in Congress</a> during the Civil War enabled <a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/lincoln-and-thanksgiving.htm">President Abraham Lincoln</a> to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.</p>
<h2>Turkey marketing campaign</h2>
<p>Godey’s, along with other media, embraced the holiday, packing their pages with recipes from New England and menus that prominently featured turkey.</p>
<p>“We dare say most of the Thanksgiving will take the form of gastronomic pleasure,” <a href="https://www.seriouseats.com/history-southern-thanksgiving">Georgia’s Augusta Chronicle</a> predicted in 1882. “Every person who can afford turkey or procure it will sacrifice the noble American fowl to-day.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting depicting an old-fashioned, traditional Thanksgiving family feast" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=762&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493976/original/file-20221107-24-qdj82y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=958&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turkey is practical, picturesque and relatively affordable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Freedom_From_Want%22_-_NARA_-_513539.jpg">Office of War Information via Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One reason for this: A roasted turkey makes a perfect celebratory centerpiece. </p>
<p>A second one is that turkey is also practical for serving to a large crowd. Turkeys are bigger than other birds raised or hunted for their meat, and it’s <a href="https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/meat-and-animal-feed.html">cheaper to produce a turkey than a cow or pig</a>.
The bird’s attributes led Europeans to incorporate turkeys into their diets following their colonization of the Americas. In England, <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/the-history-of-turkeys/">King Henry VIII</a> regularly enjoyed turkey on Christmas day a century before the Pilgrims’ feast.</p>
<h2>Christmas connection</h2>
<p>The bird cemented its position as the <a href="https://www.squaremeal.co.uk/christmas-parties/christmas-party-ideas/why-do-we-eat-turkey-at-christmas_10022">favored Christmas dish in England in the mid-19th century</a>.</p>
<p>One reason for this was that Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” sought redemption by replacing the impoverished Cratchit family’s meager goose with an enormous turkey. </p>
<p>Published in 1843, Dickens’ instantly best-selling depiction of the prayerful family meal would soon <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol">inspire Hale’s idealized Thanksgiving</a>. </p>
<p>Although the historical record is hazy, I do think it’s possible that the Pilgrims ate turkey in 1621. It certainly was served at celebrations in New England <a href="https://hilltownfamilies.org/2012/11/14/hf-613/?v=7516fd43adaa">throughout the colonial period</a>.</p>
<hr>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Troy Bickham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A mix of New England and British traditions and historical events led to the particular poultry you’ll find on Thanksgiving tables everywhere.Troy Bickham, Professor of History, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870572022-08-11T12:14:18Z2022-08-11T12:14:18ZPoliticians seek to control classroom discussions about slavery in the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478567/original/file-20220810-4757-e6ok2b.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C2664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Texas law says slavery cannot be taught as part of the 'true founding' of the United States.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-house-select-committee-on-constitutional-news-photo/1233910770?adppopup=true">Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of all the subjects taught in the nation’s public schools, few have generated as much controversy of late as the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818816116">subjects of racism and slavery</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>The attention has come largely through a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/05/gop-red-wave-critical-race-theory-526523">flood of legislative bills put forth primarily by Republicans</a> over the past year and a half. Commonly referred to as anti-critical race theory legislation, these bills are meant to <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism">restrict how teachers discuss race and racism in their classrooms</a>.</p>
<p>One of the more peculiar byproducts of this legislation came out of Texas, where, in June 2022, an advisory panel made up of nine educators recommended that slavery be referred to as “<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/30/texas-slavery-involuntary-relocation/">involuntary relocation</a>.” </p>
<p>The measure <a href="https://www.complex.com/life/texas-education-slavery-involuntary-relocation">ultimately failed</a>.</p>
<p>As an educator who trains teachers on how to educate young students about the history of slavery in the United States, I see the Texas proposal as part of a disturbing trend of politicians seeking to hide the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-violence/violence-slavery-and-race-in-early-english-and-french-america/A70A9EB704B9377091F489FB185C596D">horrific and brutal nature of slavery</a> – and to keep it divorced from the nation’s birth and development.</p>
<p>The Texas proposal, for instance, grew out of work done under a <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/pdf/SB00003F.pdf#navpanes=0">Texas law</a> that says slavery and racism can’t be taught as part of the “true founding” of the United States. Rather, the law states, they must be taught as a “failure to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”</p>
<p>To better understand the nature of slavery and the role it played in America’s development, it helps to have some basic facts about how long slavery lasted in the territory now known as the United States and how many enslaved people it involved. I also believe in using authentic records to show students the reality of slavery.</p>
<h2>Before the Mayflower</h2>
<p>Slavery in what is now known as the United States is often traced back to the year 1619. That is when – as documented by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Rolfe">Colonist John Rolfe</a> – a ship named the White Lion delivered <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">20 or so enslaved Africans </a> to Virginia.</p>
<p>As for the notion that slavery was not part of the founding of the United States, that is easily refuted by the U.S. Constitution itself. Specifically, <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C1-1/ALDE_00001086/">Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1</a> prevented Congress from prohibiting the “importation” of slaves until 1808 – nearly 20 years after the Constitution was ratified – although it didn’t use the word “slaves.” Instead, the Constitution used the phrase “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit.”</p>
<p>Congress ultimately passed the “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/slave-trade.html#:%7E:text=The%201808%20Act%20imposed%20heavy,its%20passengers%20sold%20into%20slavery.">Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves</a>,” which took effect in 1808. Although the act imposed heavy penalties on international traders, it did not end slavery itself nor the domestic sale of slaves. Not only did it drive trade underground, but many ships caught illegally trading were also brought into the United States and their “<a href="https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/act-prohibit-importation-slaves">passengers</a>” sold into slavery.</p>
<p>The last known slave ship – the Clotilda – <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/clotilda-last-known-slave-ship-arrive-us-found-180972177/">arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in 1860</a>, more than half a century after Congress outlawed the importation of enslaved individuals.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of Africa showing slave trade routes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1880 map shows where enslaved people originated from and in which directions they were forced out.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/map-showing-the-sources-of-slave-supply-and-routes-of-news-photo/3277873?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/trans-atlantic-slave-trade-database">Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database</a>, which derives it numbers from shipping records from 1525 to 1866, approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas. About 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage and arrived in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Of these, only a small portion – <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/">388,000</a> – arrived in North America.</p>
<p>Most enslaved people in the United States, then, entered slavery not through importation or “involuntary relocation,” but by birth.</p>
<p>From the arrival of those first 20 so enslaved Africans in 1619 until slavery was <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20on%20January,within%20the%20United%20States%2C%20or">abolished in 1865</a>, approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502">10 million slaves lived in the United States and contributed 410 billion hours of labor</a>. This is why slavery is a “<a href="https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/the-contribution-of-enslaved-workers-to-output-and-growth-in-the-antebellum-united-states/">crucial building block</a>” to understanding the U.S. economy from the nation’s founding up until the Civil War.</p>
<h2>The value of historical records</h2>
<p>As an educator who trains teachers on how to deal with the subject of slavery, I don’t see any value in politicians’ restricting what teachers can and can’t say about the role that slaveholders – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/">at least 1,800 of whom were congressmen</a>, not to mention the <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/slavery-in-the-presidents-neighborhood-faq#:%7E:text=A%3A%20According%20to%20surviving%20documentation%2C%20at%20least%20twelve%20presidents%20were,Andrew%20Johnson%2C%20and%20Ulysses%20S.">12 who were U.S. presidents</a> – played in the upholding of slavery in American society.</p>
<p>What I see value in is the use of historical records to educate schoolchildren about the harsh realities of slavery. There are three types of records that I recommend in particular.</p>
<h2>1. Census records</h2>
<p>Since enslaved people were counted in each census that took place from 1790 to 1860, census records enable students to learn a lot about who specifically owned slaves. Census records also enable students to see differences in slave ownership within states and throughout the nation.</p>
<p>The censuses also show the growth of the slave population over time – from
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502">697,624</a> during the first census in 1790, shortly after the nation’s founding, to <a href="https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf">3.95 million</a> during the 1860 census, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/civil-war-the-nation-moves-towards-war-1850-to-1861/">as the nation stood at the verge of civil war</a>.</p>
<h2>2. Ads for runaway slaves</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An advertisement for two men who ran away from slavery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advertisements for fugitive slaves offer a glimpse into their lives.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Few things speak to the horrors and harms of slavery like ads that slave owners took out for runaway slaves.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to find ads that describe fugitive slaves whose bodies were covered with various scars from beatings and marks from branding irons.</p>
<p>For instance, consider an <a href="https://dlas.uncg.edu/notices/notice/505">ad taken out on July 3, 1823</a>, in the<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83025819/"> Star, and North-Carolina State Gazette</a> by Alford Green, who offers $25 for a fugitive slave named Ned, whom he described as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“… about 21 years old, his weight about 150, well made, spry and active tolorably fierce look, a little inclined to be yellow, his upper fore teeth a little defective, and, I expect, has some signs of the whip on his hips and thighs, as he was whipped in that way the day before he went off.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Advertisements for runaway slaves can be accessed via digital databases, such as <a href="https://app.freedomonthemove.org/">Freedom on the Move</a>, which contains more than 32,000 ads. Another database – the <a href="http://dlas.uncg.edu/notices/">North Carolina Runaway Slave Notices project</a> – contains 5,000 ads published in North Carolina newspapers from 1751 to 1865. The sheer number of these advertisements sheds light on how many enslaved Black people attempted to escape bondage.</p>
<h2>3. Personal narratives from the enslaved</h2>
<p>Though they are few in number, recordings of interviews with formerly enslaved people exist.</p>
<p>Some of the interviews are <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/introduction-to-the-wpa-slave-narratives/limitations-of-the-slave-narrative-collection">problematic</a> for various reasons. For instance, some of the interviews were heavily edited by interviewers or did not include complete, word-for-word transcripts of the interviews.</p>
<p>Yet the interviews still provide a glimpse at the harshness of life in bondage. They also expose the fallacy of the argument that slaves – <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/wise/wise.html">as one slave owner claimed in his memoir</a> – “loved ‘old Marster’ better than anybody in the world, and would not have freedom if he offered it to them.”</p>
<p>For instance, when Fountain Hughes – a <a href="https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/fountain-hughes">descendant of a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson</a> who spent his boyhood in slavery in Charlottesville, Virginia – was asked if he would rather be free or enslaved, he <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/">told his interviewer</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know what I’d rather do? If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away, because you’re nothing but a dog. You’re not a thing but a dog. A night never come that you had nothing to do. Time to cut tobacco? If they want you to cut all night long out in the field, you cut. And if they want you to hang all night long, you hang tobacco. It didn’t matter about you’re tired, being tired. You’re afraid to say you’re tired.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s ironic, then, that when it comes to teaching America’s schoolchildren about the horrors of American slavery and how entrenched it was in America’s political establishment, some politicians would prefer to shackle educators with restrictive laws. What they could do is grant educators the ability to teach freely about the role the slavery played in the forming of a nation that was founded – as the Texas law states - on principles of liberty and equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raphael E. Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lawmakers are seeking to downplay the role that slavery played in the development of the United States, but history tells a different story.Raphael E. Rogers, Professor of Practice in Education, Clark UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870582022-07-15T14:26:38Z2022-07-15T14:26:38ZThe Supreme Court’s ideological rulings are roiling US politics – just as when Lincoln and his Republicans remade the court to fit their agenda<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474192/original/file-20220714-32349-br0sbz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6589%2C4392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">"Impeach and remove partisan zealots from the court," reads one protester's sign in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on July 9, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abortion-rights-activists-march-to-the-white-house-to-news-photo/1241807840?adppopup=true">Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Political conflict over the Supreme Court’s direction is raging in the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/abortion-us-supreme-court-gun-politics-gay-rights-government-and-273d1eb9b6f7af60e1a967e2d47b75df">aftermath of two sweeping rulings</a> in the court’s most recent term, one which expanded individual gun rights and the other which removed constitutional protection for abortion. Those rulings were the product of a conservative majority <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-26/abortion-gun-rulings-show-supreme-court-ready-to-jolt-system">made more muscular and bold in the last few years by the addition of three justices</a> appointed by former President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The rulings were hailed by conservatives and criticized by progressives and liberals. Republican Sen. <a href="https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sen-cruz-on-the-dobbs-decision-nothing-short-of-a-massive-victory-for-life">Ted Cruz of Texas</a> issued a statement saying: “The Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, reversing Roe v. Wade, is nothing short of a massive victory for life.” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/09/biden-democrats-abortion-dobbs/">President Joe Biden</a> spoke of the “outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court,” while on his left, <a href="https://www.afj.org/article/supreme-court-overturns-roe-casey-and-its-legitimacy/">Rakim H.D. Brooks</a>, the head of Alliance for Justice, a coalition of more than 130 progressive groups, said, “This disturbing milestone speaks to how hyper-partisan and lawless the Trump Court has become.” </p>
<p>The conflict over the court and its politics may be making headlines now. But history shows that political contests over the ideological slant of the court are nothing new.</p>
<p>In the 1860s, President Abraham Lincoln worked with fellow Republicans to shape the Court to carry out his party’s anti-slavery and pro-Union agenda. It was an age in which the court was unabashedly a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/supreme-court-politics-history/2020/09/25/">partisan creature</a>,” in historian Rachel Shelden’s words.</p>
<p>Justice John Catron had advised Democrat James K. Polk’s 1844 presidential campaign, and Justice John McLean was a serial presidential contender in a black robe. And in the 1860s, Republican leaders would change the number of justices and the political balance of the Court to ensure their party’s dominance of its direction.</p>
<h2>Overhauling the court</h2>
<p>When Lincoln became president in 1861, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-war-glass-negatives/articles-and-essays/time-line-of-the-civil-war/1861/">seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union</a>, yet half of the Supreme Court justices were Southerners, including Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland. One other Southern member had died in 1860, without replacement. All were Democratic appointees.</p>
<p>The court was “<a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016751/1862-01-03/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1862&index=0&rows=20&words=last+power+Southern+stronghold&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1863&proxtext=last+stronghold+southern+power&y=23&x=20&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1">the last stronghold of Southern power</a>,” according to one Northern editor. Five sitting justices were among the court’s 7-2 majority in the racist 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling, in <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/dred-scott-v-sandford/">which Taney wrote</a> that Black people were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” </p>
<p><a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014306/1861-02-06/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1861&index=4&date2=1869&words=Court+Federal+reorganize&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&rows=20&proxtext=reorganization+%22federal+courts%22&y=12&x=17&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1">Some Republicans declared</a> it “the duty of the Republican Party to reorganize the Federal Court and reverse that decision, which … disgraces the judicial department of the Federal Government.”</p>
<p>After Lincoln called in April 1861 for 75,000 volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion, four more states seceded. So did Justice John Archibald Campbell of Georgia, who resigned on April 30.</p>
<p>Chief Justice Taney helped the Confederacy when he <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lincoln-and-taneys-great-writ-showdown">tried to restrain</a> the president’s power. In May 1861, he issued a writ of habeas corpus in <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lincoln-and-taneys-great-writ-showdown">Ex Parte Merryman</a> declaring that the president couldn’t arbitrarily detain citizens suspected of aiding the Confederacy. Lincoln ignored the ruling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white protrait of a white man wearing an elaborate suit and holding a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362670/original/file-20201009-23-jnd2g7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chief Justice Roger Taney tried to limit Lincoln’s powers in the Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c07588/">Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Remaking the court</h2>
<p>To counter the court’s southern bloc, Republican leaders used judicial appointments to protect the president’s power to fight the Civil War. The Lincoln administration was also looking ahead to Reconstruction and a governing Republican majority.</p>
<p>Nine months into his term, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/first-annual-message-9">Lincoln declared</a> that “the country generally has outgrown our present judicial system,” which since 1837 had comprised nine federal court jurisdictions, or “circuits.” Supreme Court justices rode <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1540-5818.2011.01270.x">the circuit</a>, presiding over those federal courts.</p>
<p>Republicans passed the Judiciary Act of 1862, overhauling the federal court system by <a href="https://www.fjc.gov/history/exhibits/graphs-and-maps/federal-judicial-circuits">collapsing federal circuits</a> in the South from five to three while expanding circuits in the North from four to six. The old ninth circuit, for example, included just Arkansas and Mississippi. The new ninth included Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota instead. Arkansas became part of the sixth, and Mississippi, the fifth.</p>
<p>In 1862, after Campbell’s resignation and McLean’s death, Lincoln filled three open Supreme Court seats with loyal Republicans <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/noah_swayne">Noah H. Swayne</a> of Ohio, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/samuel_f_miller">Samuel Freeman Miller of Iowa</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/david_davis">David Davis of Illinois</a>. The high court now included three Republicans and three Southerners. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/67us635">The 1863 Prize cases</a> tested whether Republicans had managed to secure a friendly court. At issue was whether the Union could seize American ships sailing into blockaded Confederate ports. In a 5-4 ruling, the high court – including all three Lincoln appointees – said yes.</p>
<p>Congressional Republicans spied a way to expand the court while solving what amounted to a geopolitical judicial problem. In 1863, Congress created a new <a href="https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/12/STATUTE-12-Pg794.pdf">10th circuit by adding Oregon</a>, which had become a state in 1859, to California’s circuit. The Tenth Circuit Act also added a 10th Supreme Court justice. Lincoln elevated pro-Union Democrat <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/stephen_j_field">Stephen Field</a> to that seat.</p>
<p>And after Chief Justice Taney died in 1864, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Salmon-P-Chase">Lincoln selected his political rival, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase</a>, an architect of national monetary policy, to replace him. With Chase, Lincoln succeeded in creating a pro-administration high court.</p>
<h2>Unpacking the court</h2>
<p>After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, his successor, <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/johnson/life-in-brief">President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee</a>, soon began undoing Lincoln’s achievements. He was a Unionist Democrat given the vice presidency as an olive branch to the South. He rewarded that gesture in part by pardoning rank and file Confederates. Johnson also opposed civil rights for newly freed African Americans.</p>
<p>He also threatened to appoint like-minded judges. But the Republican-dominated Congress blocked Johnson from elevating unreconstructed Rebels to the high court. <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/39th-congress/session-1/c39s1ch210.pdf">The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866</a> shrank the number of federal circuits to seven and held that no Supreme Court vacancies would be filled until just seven justices remained. </p>
<p>The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph’s Democratic <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025925/1867-02-12/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1862&index=1&rows=20&words=Court+pack+Supreme&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1870&proxtext=pack+%22supreme+court%22&y=19&x=14&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1">editor sighed</a> that at least Republicans “cannot pack the Supreme Court at this moment.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph shows a heavyset white man wearing judicial robes and staring into the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362672/original/file-20201009-17-17ln89d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=934&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lincoln appointed three Republicans to the Supreme Court in 1862, including then-Judge Noah H. Swayne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2017895202/">Library of Congress Brady-Handy Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Courting paper money</h2>
<p>Republicans refused to consider nominating Johnson in 1868, picking Gen. Ulysses S. Grant instead. He won, and after President Grant’s inauguration, Congress passed <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/41st-congress/session-1/c41s1ch22.pdf">the Circuit Judges Act of 1869</a>, raising back to nine the number of Supreme Court justices. </p>
<p>Shortly after, Republicans faced a financial problem of their own making.</p>
<p>Beginning in 1862, Congress had passed three <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Legal-Tender-Cases#ref285279">Legal Tender Acts</a> – initially to help finance the war, authorizing debt payments using paper money not backed by gold or silver. Then-Treasury Secretary and current Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had crafted the legislation.</p>
<p>But in an 1870 case, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/75/603">Hepburn v. Griswold</a>, Chase reversed himself in a 4-3 decision, ruling the Legal Tender Acts unconstitutional. That threatened national monetary policy and Republicans’ cozy relationship with industries reliant on government sponsorship.</p>
<p>President Grant, preparing for Chase’s ruling, was already working on a political solution. On the day of the Hepburn decision, he appointed two pro-paper-money Supreme Court nominees, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/william_strong">William Strong of Pennsylvania</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/joseph_p_bradley">Joseph P. Bradley of New York</a>. Comparing the Republican administration to “a brokerage office,” a Democratic newspaper <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84038628/1870-09-20/ed-1/seq-2/#date1=1862&index=4&rows=20&words=court+pack+supreme&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1870&proxtext=pack+%22supreme+court%22&y=19&x=14&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1">howled that</a> “the attempt to pack the supreme court to secure a desired judicial decision … [has] brought shame and humiliation to an entire people.” </p>
<p>It also brought a Republican majority to the high court for the first time.</p>
<p>Chief Justice Chase opposed revisiting the paper money issue. But the Supreme Court about-faced, ruling 5-4 in the 1871 cases <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/79/457">Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis</a> that the government could indeed print paper money to pay debts. Chase died in 1873, and his successor <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/scc/document.php?id=bioenc-427-18170-979622&v=4f9cfec81ebd03f5">Morrison Waite</a> championed the Republican pro-business agenda.</p>
<h2>Careful what you wish for</h2>
<p>The Republican transformation of the federal judiciary in the 1860s and 1870s served the party well in the Civil War and constructed a legal framework for a modernizing industrial economy.</p>
<p>But in the end, Lincoln and Grant’s high court appointments ended up being disastrous for civil rights. Justices Bradley, Miller, Strong and Waite tended to constrain civil rights protections like the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection of laws. Subsequent rulings gutted <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-supreme-court-difficult-nominations-have-led-to-historical-injustices-103579">Black civil rights</a>. </p>
<p>In remaking the court in Republicans’ image, the party got what it wanted – but not what was needed to fulfill the promise of “<a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm">a new birth of freedom</a>.” </p>
<p><em>This article is an update to <a href="https://theconversation.com/packing-the-court-amid-national-crises-lincoln-and-his-republicans-remade-the-supreme-court-to-fit-their-agenda-147139">a story that originally was published</a> on Oct. 12, 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Calvin Schermerhorn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History shows that political contests over the ideological slant of the court are nothing new.Calvin Schermerhorn, Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1833112022-06-15T19:19:03Z2022-06-15T19:19:03ZJuneteenth celebrates just one of the United States’ 20 emancipation days – and the history of how emancipated people were kept unfree needs to be remembered, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467219/original/file-20220606-20-dln03a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C1057%2C758&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emancipation Day celebration, June 19, 1900, held in 'East Woods' on East 24th St. in Austin, Texas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-juneteenth">Austin History Center</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The actual day was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/juneteenth-day-celebration.html">June 19, 1865</a>, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas, who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations.</p>
<p>The perils of unjust laws and racist social customs were still great in Texas for the 250,000 enslaved Black people there, but the <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-juneteenth">celebrations known as Juneteenth</a> were said to have gone on for seven straight days. </p>
<p>The spontaneous jubilation was partly over Gen. Gordon Granger’s <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/general-order-no-3">General Order No. 3</a>. It <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/general-order-no-3">read in part</a>, “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” </p>
<p>But the emancipation that took place in Texas that day in 1865 was just the latest in a series of emancipations that had been unfolding since the 1770s, most notably the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/emancipation-proclamation">Emancipation Proclamation</a> signed by <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-emancipation-proclamation-came-to-be-signed-165533991/">President Abraham Lincoln</a> two years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863. </p>
<p>As I explore in <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Black-Ghost-of-Empire/Kris-Manjapra/9781982123475">my book</a> “Black Ghost of Empire,” between the 1780s and 1930s, during the era of liberal empire and the rise of modern humanitarianism, over 80 emancipations from slavery occurred, from <a href="http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1776-1865/abolition-slavery.html">Pennsylvania in 1780</a> to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-slavery/slavery-in-africa-18041936/F01667F6DC2CDF8A51D6F9E0D5505E6E">Sierra Leone in 1936</a>. </p>
<p>There were, in fact, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Day">20 separate emancipations</a> in the
United States alone, from 1780 to 1865, across the U.S. North and South.</p>
<p>In my view as <a href="https://as.tufts.edu/history/people/faculty/kris-manjapra">a scholar of race and colonialism</a>, Emancipation Days – Juneteenth in Texas – are not what many people think, because emancipation did not do what most of us think it did. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL23256427M/There_is_a_river">historians have long documented</a>, emancipations did not remove all the shackles that prevented Black people from obtaining full citizenship rights. Nor did emancipations prevent states from enacting their own laws that prohibited Black people from voting or living in white neighborhoods. </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Kris-Manjapra/157794425">based on my research</a>, emancipations were actually designed to force Blacks and the federal government to pay reparations to slave owners – not to the enslaved – thus ensuring <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1341787?seq=1">white people maintained advantages in accruing and passing down wealth across generations.</a>.</p>
<h2>Reparations to slave owners</h2>
<p>The emancipations shared three common features that, when added together, merely freed the enslaved in one sense, but reenslaved them in another sense. </p>
<p>The first, arguably the most important, was the <a href="https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/gradualism-republican-party">ideology of gradualism</a>, which said that atrocities against Black people would be ended slowly, over a long and open-ended period.</p>
<p>The second feature was state legislators who held fast to the racist principle that emancipated people were units of slave owner property – not captives who had been subjected to crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>The third was the insistence that Black people had to take on <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2117142">various forms of debt</a> in order to exit slavery. This included economic debt, exacted by the ongoing forced and underpaid work that freed people had to pay to slave owners.</p>
<p>In essence, freed people had to pay for their freedom, while enslavers had to be paid to allow them to be free.</p>
<h2>Emancipation myths and realities</h2>
<p>On March 1, 1780, for instance, Pennsylvania’s state Legislature set a global precedent for how emancipations would pay reparations to slave owners and buttress the system of white property rule. </p>
<p>The Pennsylvania <a href="http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1776-1865/abolition-slavery.html">Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery</a> stipulated “that all persons, as well negroes, and mulattos, as others, who shall be born within this State, from and after the Passing of this Act, shall not be deemed and considered as Servants for Life or Slaves.” </p>
<p>At the same time, the legislation prescribed “that every negroe and mulatto child born within this State” could be held in servitude “unto the age of twenty eight Years” and “liable to like correction and punishment” as enslaved people.</p>
<p>After that first <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/gradual-abolition-act-of-1780/#:%7E:text=The%20Gradual%20Abolition%20Act%20of,without%20making%20slavery%20immediately%20illegal.">Emancipation Day in Pennsylvania</a>, enslaved people still remained in bondage for the rest of their lives, unless voluntarily freed by slave owners. </p>
<p>Only the newborn children of enslaved women were nominally free after Emancipation Day. Even then, these children were forced to serve as bonded laborers from childhood until their 28th birthday. </p>
<p>All future emancipations shared the Pennsylvania DNA.</p>
<p>Emancipation Day came to <a href="https://connecticuthistory.org/from-the-state-historian-connecticuts-slow-steps-toward-emancipation/">Connecticut</a> and <a href="https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-abolition-of-slavery-in-ri/">Rhode Island</a> on March 1, 1784. On July 4, 1799, it dawned in <a href="https://history.nycourts.gov/when-did-slavery-end-in-new-york/">New York</a>, and on July 4, 1804, in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24486906">New Jersey</a>. After 1838, West Indian people in the United States began commemorating the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/emancipation.htm">British Empire’s Emancipation Day</a> of Aug. 1.</p>
<p><a href="https://emancipation.dc.gov/page/historical-overview-dc-emancipation">The District of Columbia’s day</a> came on April 16, 1862. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Seven white men gather around a table to watch President Abraham Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468578/original/file-20220613-24-4a8phb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/abraham-lincoln-signs-emancipation-royalty-free-illustration/122147017?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eight months later, on Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html">signed the Emancipation Proclamation</a> that freed the enslaved only in Confederate states – not in the states loyal to the Union, such as New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/bs-md-emancipation-150-20141101-story.html">Emancipation Day dawned in Maryland</a> on Nov. 1, 1864. In the following year, emancipation was granted on April 3 in <a href="https://www.virginiamemory.com/online-exhibitions/exhibits/show/remaking-virginia/end-of-slavery/celebrations">Virginia</a>, on May 8 in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/05/emancipation-day-commemoration-from-columbus-mississippi/361971/">Mississippi</a>, on May 20 in <a href="https://dos.myflorida.com/library-archives/research/explore-our-resources/emancipation/">Florida</a>, on May 29 in <a href="https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/emancipation-day-and-juneteenth-celebrations-aren-new-georgia/AnJRzXlY4l2mVl25NI0VzM/">Georgia</a>, on June 19 in <a href="https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/juneteenth">Texas</a> and on Aug. 8 in <a href="https://www.nps.gov/anjo/learn/historyculture/johnson-and-tn-emancipation.htm">Tennessee</a> and <a href="https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2015/08/07/emancipation-day-marks-slaverys-end-kentucky/31277799/">Kentucky</a>.</p>
<h2>Slavery by another name</h2>
<p>After the Civil War, the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/historical-documents/the-reconstruction-amendments">three Reconstruction Amendments</a> to the U.S. Constitution each contained loopholes that aided the ongoing oppression of Black communities. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment">Thirteenth Amendment of 1865</a> allowed for the enslavement of incarcerated people <a href="https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-convict-leasing/">through convict leasing</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment">Fourteenth Amendment of 1868</a> permitted incarcerated people to be denied the right to vote.</p>
<p>And the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/15th-amendment">Fifteenth Amendment of 1870</a> failed to explicitly ban forms of <a href="https://time.com/6165147/fifteenth-amendment-racial-equality-today/">voter suppression</a> that targeted Black voters and would intensify during the coming Jim Crow era. </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/general-order-no-3">Granger’s Order No. 3</a>, on June 19, 1865, spelled it out.</p>
<p>Freeing the slaves, the order read, “involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor.”</p>
<p>Yet, the order further states: “The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” </p>
<h2>The meaning of Juneteenth</h2>
<p>Since the moment emancipation celebrations started on March 1, 1780, all the way up to June 19, 1865, Black crowds gathered to seek redress for slavery. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="with a blue sky in the background, a Black woman stands over a crowd of people, raising her fist in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Black woman raises her fist in the air during a Juneteenth reenactment celebration in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prescylia-mae-raises-her-fist-in-the-air-during-a-news-photo/1233550531?adppopup=true">Mark Felix /AFP/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On that first Juneteenth in Texas, and increasingly so during the ones that followed, free people celebrated their resilience amid the failure of emancipation to bring full freedom. </p>
<p>They stood for the end of debt bondage, racial policing and discriminatory laws that unjustly harmed Black communities. They elevated their collective imagination from out of the spiritual sinkhole of white property rule. </p>
<p>Over the decades, the traditions of Juneteenth ripened into larger gatherings in public parks, with barbecue picnics and firecrackers and street parades with brass bands.</p>
<p>At the end of his 1999 posthumously published novel, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/46133/juneteenth-by-ralph-ellison/">Juneteenth</a>,” noted Black author <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/30/317056807/ralph-ellison-no-longer-the-invisible-man-100-years-after-his-birth">Ralph Ellison</a> called for a poignant question to be asked on Emancipation Day: “How the hell do we get love into politics or compassion into history?” </p>
<p>The question calls for a pause as much today as ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kris Manjapra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Known as Juneteenth in Texas, Emancipation Days symbolized America’s attempt to free the enslaved across the nation. But those days were unable to prevent new forms of economic slavery.Kris Manjapra, Professor of History, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1838622022-06-03T12:14:47Z2022-06-03T12:14:47ZUS moves to rename Army bases honoring Confederate generals who fought to defend slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466425/original/file-20220531-26-bt5sl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=851%2C333%2C2021%2C1661&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, Fort Bragg, outside Fayetteville, N.C., is one of the U.S. bases under consideration for a name change. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-shows-fort-bragg-information-may-13-2004-in-news-photo/50837592?adppopup=true">Logan Mock-Bunting/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For decades, nine U.S. Army bases have carried the names of men who fought against the U.S. Army – in a war waged to defend and perpetuate the slavery of people of African descent.</p>
<p>These military installations, all in Southern states, were named to honor such figures as Gen. <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lee-robert-e-1807-1870/">Robert E. Lee</a>, who commanded the Confederate Army; <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/john-b-hood">John Bell Hood</a>, an associate of Lee’s known for being both brave and impetuous; and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/leonidas-polk.htm">Leonidas Polk</a>, an Episcopal bishop who, thanks to his friendship with Jefferson Davis, began the war as a major general. All three enslaved Black people. </p>
<p>Created by Congress in 2021 to recommend names that exemplify modern day U.S. military and national values, <a href="https://www.thenamingcommission.gov/home">a federal panel</a> took a major step on May 24, 2022, toward removing this remnant of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause">lost cause” ideology</a>. </p>
<p>That ideology is the discredited notion that the Confederacy’s rebellion was an honorable struggle for the Southern way of life and that what Confederates viewed as the “war of northern aggression” was over states’ rights, not slavery.</p>
<p>What the government called the <a href="https://www.thenamingcommission.gov/names">Naming Commission proposed</a> rechristening nine of the Confederate-themed bases, mostly after men and women of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds – people who “would be inspirational to the soldiers and civilians who serve on our Army posts, and to the communities who support them.”</p>
<p>For example, Fort Lee in Virginia would become Fort Gregg-Adams in honor of <a href="https://www.moaa.org/content/publications-and-media/news-articles/2021-news-articles/logistics-officer-rose-through-the-ranks-during-36-year-career/">Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg</a> and <a href="https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/charity-adams-earley/">Lt. Col. Charity Adams</a>, African Americans who excelled at logistics and other military support functions during World War II.</p>
<p>Fort Hood in Texas would become Fort Cavazos, commemorating <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/fort-hood-renamed-fort-cavazos-first-hispanic-four-star-general-rcna30317">Richard Cavazos</a>, who received the Purple Heart and other awards for valor in Vietnam and <a href="https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/5075">became the first Latino</a> to reach the rank of general.</p>
<p>And Fort Polk in Louisiana would become Fort Johnson in recognition of <a href="https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/henry-johnson">Sgt. William Henry Johnson</a>, who was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart in 1996 and the <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2201270/medal-of-honor-monday-army-sgt-henry-johnson/">Medal of Honor</a> in 2015 for heroism during World War I. As a Black man in the Jim Crow era, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remembering-henry-johnson-the-soldier-called-black-death-117386701/">Johnson was denied</a> those honors during his military service.</p>
<p>“We wanted names and values that underpin the core responsibility of the military, to defend the Constitution of the United States,” said Michelle Howard, a retired Navy admiral <a href="https://www.thenamingcommission.gov/names">who chairs the commission</a>. </p>
<h2>Unquestioned for too long</h2>
<p>Four of the bases had been named for Confederate leaders at the start of World War I, and the others at the start of World War II.</p>
<p>Until recently, the military installations honoring Confederate leaders received little scrutiny from the media. As a newspaper reporter four decades ago, <a href="https://robertson.vcu.edu/people/emeriti-and-affiliate-faculty/south.html">I gave the names</a> a free pass.</p>
<p>In 1981, I covered the <a href="https://oa-bsa.org/history/1981-national-jamboree">Boy Scouts Jamboree</a> at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia without mentioning that the base was named for a <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/p-hill">man who had turned against the United States</a> and fought to defend slavery. </p>
<h2>Movement to rename the bases</h2>
<p>In recent years, more Americans, including those living in the South, have reconsidered the use of Confederate iconography. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/after-dylann-roof-what-the-fate-the-confederate-flag/HaCtiPvplkXOdQbn6jAhAN/">Such concerns escalated</a> in 2015 after Dylann Roof, a self-avowed white supremacist, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/death-sentence-upheld-man-who-killed-9-south-carolina-church-n1277667">shot and killed</a> nine Black people during a Bible study at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Investigators later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/dylann-storm-roof-photos-website-charleston-church-shooting.html">found a website</a> registered in the name of Roof containing images of Roof posing with the Confederate battle flag.</p>
<p><iframe id="3nI9P" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/3nI9P/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The issue gained momentum in the U.S. Congress after the George Floyd protests in 2020, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970610428/nearly-100-confederate-monuments-removed-in-2020-report-says-more-than-700-remai">when many communities</a> started taking down statues and renaming buildings that honored Confederate figures. </p>
<p>Congress included the creation of the Naming Commission in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Then-President Donald Trump <a href="https://fcw.com/2020/12/trump-vetoes-2021-defense-bill/258615/">vetoed the bill</a>, but Congress overrode the veto.</p>
<h2>Coming up with new names</h2>
<p>The Naming Commission received more than 34,000 suggestions from the public for new base names.</p>
<p>“Every name either originated from or resonated with the local communities,” said Ty Seidule, a retired Army general and the panel’s vice chair.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An old black and white photograph depicts a white woman wearing a dark hat and dress in a formal pose next to a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466673/original/file-20220601-49512-it5y52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Full-length portrait of Mary Edwards Walker, 1832-1919, American physician and advocate of women’s rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/full-length-portrait-of-mary-edwards-walker-1832-1919-news-photo/515219782?adppopup=true">Mathew Brady/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to the previously mentioned names, the commission proposed renaming bases for:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.army.mil/article/182389/vietnam_war_hero_hal_moore_dies_at_age_94">Lt. Gen. Hal Moore</a>, who served in Vietnam and other assignments, and his wife, <a href="https://www.fortmoore.com/summa">Julia Moore</a>, who has been an advocate for military families and reformed the military’s death notice procedures. </p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/dwight-d-eisenhower/">Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower</a>.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.army.mil/article/183800/meet_dr_mary_walker_the_only_female_medal_of_honor_recipient">Dr. Mary Walker</a>, the Army’s first female surgeon, who received the Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/van-t-barfoot-va-medal-of-honor-recipient-who-won-fight-to-fly-flag-in-front-yard-dies-at-92/2012/03/05/gIQARDTdtR_story.html">Sgt. Van Barfoot</a>, a <a href="https://www.army.mil/nativeamericans/barfoot.html">Choctaw Indian</a> who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/loc.natlib.afc2001001.89754/">Michael Novosel Sr.</a>, a pilot who volunteered in his 40s to fight in Vietnam and subsequently rescued his son, who had been shot down and was stranded near the enemy. <a href="https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/michael-j-novosel">Novosel’s selection</a> recognizes “generational service,” the panel said.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The commission also proposed renaming Fort Bragg, North Carolina, <a href="https://www.armytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/05/24/panel-to-push-for-fort-bragg-to-be-renamed-fort-liberty/">as Fort Liberty</a>. </p>
<p>Congress and the U.S. secretary of defense <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/us/politics/army-bases-confederate-names.html">still must sign off</a> on the new names. But people like Troy Mosley, who for years has pushed to erase the Confederate names, is encouraged.</p>
<p>Mosley, who formed a group called <a href="https://www.citizensagainstintolerance.org/">Citizens Against Intolerance</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/troy.mosley/posts/pfbid0Y4UyZjcxA8JzbNCcCPUvdV3dFsTmE3HZstgpdxcARHAWt1V3Q7KUuuaEbKu8XUfjl">said</a> the commission “did a fantastic job selecting name replacements from the rich tapestry of diverse and distinguished military service.”</p>
<p>To people who have anguished over the prevalence of Confederate symbols in the U.S., the commission’s proposals are long overdue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff South does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of the last relics of ‘lost cause’ ideology is nearing its end as a federal panel has recommended renaming US military bases now honoring Confederate generals.Jeff South, Associate professor emeritus, Virginia Commonwealth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1800702022-05-20T12:13:35Z2022-05-20T12:13:35ZThe US Civil War drastically reshaped how Americans deal with death – will the pandemic?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464089/original/file-20220518-23-b5e9l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C35%2C5964%2C3943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An art installation by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg in remembrance of Americans who have died of COVID-19, near the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakBidenFuneralAssistance/5b587173d76b4be8ab21b5cfba95e5cd/photo?Query=%22in%20america:%20remember%22&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=108&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Brynn Anderson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/how-many-people-died-covid-united-states-1-million-graphic/">1 million people living in the United States</a> have died of COVID-19 during the past two years.</p>
<p>The numbers paint a clear picture of devastation, though they can’t capture the individual and familial pain of losing loved ones – which will no doubt transform many more millions of Americans’ lives.</p>
<p>The impact of this mass death on American society as a whole is less clear, especially since the pandemic is not over. While there have been a few moments of public remembrance – 700,000 white flags <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/covid-19-white-flag-memorial-installation-comes-to-an-end-on-national-mall/2820218/">placed on the National Mall</a>, and President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/05/12/statement-from-president-joe-biden-marking-one-million-american-lives-lost-to-covid-19/">brief words</a> noting the “one million empty chairs around the dinner table” – the country is only beginning to grapple with the shared grief of so many deaths.</p>
<p>Instead, there is public discord surrounding those who died. In a country divided over basic facts about the virus, deaths have been exploited for political purposes, or <a href="https://khn.org/news/how-covid-death-counts-become-the-stuff-of-conspiracy-theories/">wrapped into conspiracy theories</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://religion.emory.edu/home/people/faculty/laderman-gary.html">a scholar</a> of religion who has studied <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/rest-in-peace-9780195183559?q=rest%20in%20peace&lang=en&cc=us">the history of death in America</a>, I am quite preoccupied with how the country makes sense of, honors and remembers the COVID-19 dead. The magnitude of death today immediately brings to my mind the event that killed the second-highest number of Americans: the Civil War.</p>
<p>My first book, “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078688/sacred-remains/">The Sacred Remains</a>,” looked at the conflict’s impact on Americans’ attitudes toward death, during another period of extreme division and overwhelming loss of life.</p>
<h2>Preserving the dead</h2>
<p>Roughly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html">750,000 people</a> died in the Civil War, or <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/statistics-civil-war">2.5% of the country’s population</a> at the time – the equivalent of 7 million Americans dying today.</p>
<p>The unprecedented death toll had profound consequences on American cultures of death for generations, particularly through the emergence of the funeral industry.</p>
<p>Throughout the 19th century, most Americans died, and had their bodies tended to, at home. Last moments with the corpse were with loved ones, who were responsible for washing and preparing it for the final rituals before burial, generally in local churchyards.</p>
<p>But the Civil War provided an opportunity for <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078688/sacred-remains/">a game-changing development</a>. <a href="https://www.civilwarmed.org/embalming1/">Embalming</a> was an innovative method of preserving bodies that allowed some Northern families to have their war dead retrieved from the mostly Southern battlefields and brought back to be buried in Northern soil.</p>
<p>The display of President Abraham Lincoln’s embalmed body after his assassination was <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-lincolns-embrace-of-embalming-birthed-the-american-funeral-industry-86196">a pivotal moment</a> in this transformation. His corpse was transported on a train from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, with frequent stops in many Northern cities where it was put on display for grieving Americans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white illustration shows a line of people paying respects at a funeral." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464103/original/file-20220518-19-ixh8mx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing depicts Americans viewing Abraham Lincoln’s body at City Hall in New York City in 1865.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abraham-lincolns-funeral-1865-citizens-viewing-the-body-at-news-photo/517479796?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As embalming became more common, it helped legitimize a new class of professional experts: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183559.001.0001">funeral directors</a>, whose homes became a mix of business, mortality, religion and their own domestic life. By the early 20th century, this new business had established a fairly standard American way of death, centered on the viewing of an embalmed body to bring a community together.</p>
<p>Americans’ relationship to their dead would never be the same. The intimacies the living had with the dead before the Civil War gradually disappeared, as funeral homes managed the care of more and more bodies.</p>
<h2>Meaning-making</h2>
<p>One of my intellectual heroes, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/713685991">sociologist Robert Hertz</a>, wrote <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Death-and-the-right-hand/Hertz/p/book/9780415489072">a famous essay</a> about death and society in 1907. He argued that social groups represent themselves as immortal, capable of overcoming the death of any member. The community’s survival depends greatly on transcending death, so it transforms the dead into sacred symbols of group identity and social cohesion.</p>
<p>Hertz’s studies focused on death in small societies in Borneo. Yet his exploration of the relationship between the death of the individual and the life of the social group is pertinent now, in the context of the pandemic – as it was in the aftermath of the Civil War.</p>
<p>The victorious Union turned dead soldiers into symbols of the nation. Their deaths were seen as sacred sacrifices to preserve the country. For religion scholars, this is a clear example of <a href="http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm">American civil religion</a>. In the U.S., civil religion is a patriotic culture that sees America as a sacred, exceptional country, built on shared ideals, myths and traditions.</p>
<p>But the Northern victors did not “control the narrative,” as we say these days. Indeed, a very striking and still-present counternarrative soon developed among the vanquished Confederates after the war. The losers built an alternative civil religious culture, what historians refer to as “<a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820334257/baptized-in-blood/">the religion of the Lost Cause</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women in white dresses and skirts stand in front of a war monument in a black and white photograph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464114/original/file-20220518-17-9khcs9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daughters of the Confederacy unveil the ‘Southern Cross’ monument at Arlington, Va., in 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/arlington-va-daughters-of-the-confederacy-unveiling-the-news-photo/515947348?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For many white Southerners, the battlefield dead did not signal God had abandoned their cause but rather illuminated his support for <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/lost-cause-religion/#:%7E:text=Historians%20refer%20to%20this%20as,the%20Virginia%20journalist%20Edward%20A">values associated with the Confederacy</a> – values the United States is still grappling with today. They saw the loss as a temporary setback, but believed that ultimate victory would come if they maintained some form of Southern cultural purity based on notions of racial, regional and religious superiority.</p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>The politicization of death is not uncommon in American history, particularly during times of profound social crisis. And since the start of the pandemic, the same has happened with COVID-19 victims. </p>
<p>Death during a pandemic is obviously different from death during a civil war. In both cases, however, it is difficult for a divided country to experience unity in the face of an enormous loss of life and to agree on what those deaths mean for the nation.</p>
<p>Unique aspects of the pandemic make national mourning, and united healing, even more complicated. For example, the virus has not taken an equal toll across the country. The death toll shows <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-is-hitting-black-and-poor-communities-the-hardest-underscoring-fault-lines-in-access-and-care-for-those-on-margins-135615">significant disparities</a> among different economic and racial groups. And the need to prevent contagion has intensified the physical separation between the living and the dead, making some meaningful rites of mourning <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pandemic-changed-death-rituals-and-left-grieving-families-without-a-sense-of-closure-175302">difficult or impossible</a>.</p>
<p>Many communities have made efforts to commemorate the pain of the pandemic, such as through <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/01/929938826/for-d-a-de-los-muertos-remembering-those-lost-to-the-coronavirus">Dia de los Muertos</a>, a Mexican holiday honoring those who have died. But there have been minimal efforts to help make sense of the deaths on a national level: to rally around a compelling public narrative about the tremendous loss of life and grief. It remains to be seen if Americans will eventually incorporate the losses into a unifying civil religion, or only use them to reinforce polarization.</p>
<p>One million dead and counting will certainly require more efforts, more reflection and more soul-searching to help American society overcome and indeed draw strength from <a href="https://theconversation.com/brains-are-bad-at-big-numbers-making-it-impossible-to-grasp-what-a-million-covid-19-deaths-really-means-179081">this unimaginable number</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gary Laderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Civil War – the second-most-deadly event in US history, just behind COVID-19 –contributed to lasting changes in how Americans care for the dead.Gary Laderman, Goodrich C White Professor of Religion, Emory UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.