Reconstruction

“I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people not be let in—as for instance, , the very intelligent , and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks…But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone.”

March 13, 1864

We are now facing Make America Great Again which failed before and will soon face its “manifest destiny.” I can see it shaping up as I read the news by Trump. That is America’s destiny. And you will find the name of the author of that quote later on. Go back to read it again when you find the name of the man.

Timothy Snyder wrote this in 2024.

“Trump disqualified himself from office by taking part in an insurrection and thereby seeking to substitute the rule of fear for the rule of law.

The historian Eric Foner was the first to connect the storming of the Capitol to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bans oath-breaking insurrectionists from holding office.  The legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen made the case for disqualification, exhaustively and convincingly, in a law review article posted last August.”

Eric Foner wrote the book that I am now reading. True “Reconstruction” remained unfinished and now even Black people around Trump have bought into ideas that America was Made Great as they focused on “Keep America Great” when Biden clearly won. And the Republicans have created a “Constitutional Crisis” which is going to affect the world adversely.

Eric Foner wrote that what happened to Black people in the Democratic North was a “pogrom.” I read about that period in another book which did not state the word “pogrom” at all. Racism and war over jobs were major parts of the pogroms of Eastern Europe. Immigrants of all faiths participated in that evil behavior.

There were no ovens, but Black people were burnt alive. Children were torn from their mothers’ arms and killed in various horrific ways. Women on their first day of motherhood were beaten. Hitler must have loved reading this kind of material (if he found it) since these are facts that were known but not taught to US. Even the last book, I read about New York City’s race riots didn’t spell things out more.

Troops were sent in after the victory at Gettysburg to put down the rioting.

Let’s switch over to another channel to see what our nation was really like. But keep in mind that it was Donald J. Trump who wanted “Norwegian” types to enter America. Keeping out Black people then is the next lesson. In Ohio, its “Enquirer” wrote, “Slavery is dead…the negro is not, there is the misfortune.” And we should think about Ohio where the Haitians, Donald J. Trump said, were eating cats and dogs. There Republicans raised their voices against the talk, but probably voted for Trump on Election Day. And now that Haitians have fled and not dead, what did those very same voices do and what will they do to protect the Haitians there from taking flight in the face of fear? It’s the civil war that has never left. It’s the insurrection that Republicans claim never was.

Unfinished business indeed! I am wired in a different way. I know the educational gaps that have been created and I have tried hard to make America a much better place. Let’s go back to 2013 even before Trump. Forty million adults in our nation who never completed high school. The average annual expectation to help people catch up was 400,000 (out of 40 million, I repeat) high school equivalency diplomas annually or more. In a great year the number would exceed 600,000 before a new, more challenging test would appear. Now there are still 40 million adults in need of a diploma and 150,000 diplomas given out by the GED Testing Service annually. What a disaster for our nation’s families. So, one percent (400,000) shrunk to probably one-half percent annually (there is the HI-SET high school equivalency to consider). This drastic failure needed my help and guidance from the beginning in 2014 as the numbers fell in very good GED states. And to make my point stronger is this. Governors failed. I learned how to detect things when others didn’t. Eric Foner was on the mark as a historian. Timothy Snyder too. And history and current events matter since history repeats itself.

And don’t forget that the Party of Lincoln, the Grand Old Party (GOP) that helped free the slaves around 1864 advocated segregation in 1964 under Barry Goldwater. What will happen in 2064?

And in Indiana, women marched with the banner “Fathers save us from nigger husbands.” Again, it was Democrats and repeatedly Democrats, but why the “Norwegian” types by Trump recently which is almost like yesterday and should be mistreat immigrants and migrants because it is his commandment. What about the real Bible? What about the story of Joseph in Egypt? Is that long forgotten by Catholics, Christians and Jews? He had lost his coat of many colors a long time before that.  And Cardinal Dolan, a friend of Trump, recently spoke words of praise for Trump’s religious faith. Stop selling those autographed Bibles and live by it.

And with that said there is more on this plate to share. Iowa, Indiana, Oregon, and Illinois were states (Democratic held) where it was decided to close their borders to blacks. Sound familiar today? Has the governor of Texas really read the Bible and people everywhere today who objected to the migrants.

Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York City were places where Blacks were confined to the poorest, unhealthiest quarters by discrimination including schools and jobs. Blacks were just 2 percent of the population in the North back then.

In May of 1865, Massachusetts passed the first major law to permit Blacks the equal use of public transportation. How did that happen? National attention was needed and Robert Smalls, a “black war hero, after being thrown off public transportation in Philadelphia had to walk three miles to his job in the navy yard provided that. Philadelphia did not act until 1867, but Cincinnati, New York City, San Franciso, and Cleveland desegregated during the war. And I have been in voice in the wilderness for education for 20 years.

There is lots of information in The World the War Made in the book on Reconstruction. Inflation and tariffs took their place, and the poor were badly hurt as prices went up. Tariffs helped pay for the war expenses, but it impacted so severely that crimes were committed. Tariffs on China resulted in people paying money to the federal government, but Trump made people believe that China was paying for it. And Trump won. Learn the lessons of the Civil War. War brings inflation and the costs of the recent pandemic did, too.

Check this out. I found the inflation rate in the U.S. under Obama and Trump and the inflation was often similar. Then suddenly in 2020, the inflation rate did drop a lot, but it suddenly rose and doubled and tripled in the remaining months of 2020. It was an average low of about 3 tenths of one percent for those three months before doubling and tripling. So, it was on its way up to greet the Biden Administration.

I hope that Americans will learn much more. It’s not about the college educated against those without degrees. It’s about knowledge that we can count on that is universal and not about those “fake news” proponents.

I was going to finish this article, but I read more highly interesting information. The border states  and dilemmas captured my attention. Louisiana should be mentioned first although it was last on the historian’s list. Black people held slaves and here is one example. Antoine Dubuclet owned 100 slaves, and he was sugar planter. The French and Spanish influence in Louisiana was so great and lots of light skinned descendants of White men and Black women identified with European culture. And there were mulatto emigrants from Haiti. As you can see, back in those days, it was unlikely to hear some clown talk about Haitians eating cats and dogs.                         

Then there were Tennessee, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia to learn more about. The ideas were all over the map or various. What should be done then and after the Civil War was over. The Structure of the South was failing apart due to the war and class resentments. Communism wasn’t even a factor since wealthy planters dominated in politics. At the rate things were going, the planters would soon have to pick their own crops as there was huge destabilization due to the war.

At the top of this list, I decided to place that freed blacks would have their own territory which I will get to later. Emancipation could be slow or faster from one locality to another. Voting rights discussed were in favor and against for blacks. In courts blacks could testify in court against whites and elsewhere localities would not allow that. Emancipation did not mean gaining full political rights in many or most cases. And this was before Jim Crow. I guess it was some other form of Crow. Public schools were set up for the first time. Blacks could be excluded from that. Deportation, already mentioned in my last article, was on the table. Emancipation was considered “unconstitutional” as well. Expulsion also was proposed. People were making “America Great.”

As I woke up this morning very early, things hit me. What if blacks had been removed to some territory or worse such as deportation? Names popped into my head and ideas. Wilt Chamberlain, Sugar Ray Robinson, Michael Jordan, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, Israel, the Nazis and Hitler in particular soaked my brain. It’s possible that we would have heard about and learned about all of this the way things happened, and I forgot about Jack Johnson and the “Great White Hope” concept. And Albert Einstein.  What if blacks had been moved into their own territory? We could imagine lots of changes in life and history.

Would that territory continue to exist and if it existed what direction would all things go in?

Would it be called the United Negro States of America or some other similar name? Would its great scientific minds who created lots of important things and usually didn’t get credit for it create more things including the atomic bomb which was the work of The Manhattan Project? Would Einstein have joined the black nation in that effort after fleeing from Nazi Germany? Would Hitler have been more aggressive in working with neo-Nazis in America in the 1930s because of the existence of that black nation. Would the nation fall under the guidance of The Nation of Islam, which could have had its development sped up after the Civil War by decades. Would blacks there join against Germany, Japan, and Italy in World War II, jumping past World War I. Would the nation be part Islamic and part Israelite since we are told that blacks were the original Jews?

And in sports, wouldn’t that speed up the development of black athletes who might have been better than the men (think women as well) on the list. May I say kindly “you never know.”

I guess we could ask just how many blacks would have remained in the United States of America, if….And thinking about Israel and what it has gone through since 1948 surrounded by hostile Arab nations, would the UNSA just mentioned defensively react the way that Israelis react who are under constant pressure facing that world? My thought process just ended with the word “genocide” circulating in my mind and finding its place right here.

Oh, the quote. Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States. And where is the clown. Send out the clown!