Broken Eggs Cannot Be Mended

"The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter."

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times argues that "Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction—for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought—not for restoration of what was."

"The Broader Threat Posed by Right-Wing Authoritarianism"

"With the rise of right-wing populism and neofascism, the crisis has become acute. Neofascism sees the trade union movement as its enemy while at the same time trying to appeal to the working class who make up labor's membership. However, to win over this base, the far right is harkening back to previous pseudo pro-worker appeals by embracing racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic politics that can present as being in the interest of everyday working people."

At In These Times, Bill Fletcher, Jr., concludes that "[t]rade unionism must either be anti-fascist, or it will be nothing at all."

While Carl Davidson at ZNetwork calls for a "Third Reconstruction."

And Dustin Guastella at Damage blames the "MANGO class."

"Rooted in the Blood of More Than 700,000 Americans Who Died in the Civil War"

"Section 1's origins lie deep in our past. It is rooted in the petitions of African Americans during and after the American Revolution that demanded freedom and natural rights for their service to the patriot cause. It stems from many ideas and strategies of the British and American abolition movements. It echoes Thomas Jefferson's inclusion of equality among 'these truths' in the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln's use of the same word in the Gettysburg Address, as well as his full-throated embrace of immigration well before the Civil War. Its most direct and powerful harbinger is the emancipation of nearly 4 million slaves in the midst of the war. Without that greatest transformation in American history, there would be no Fourteenth Amendment—no birthright citizenship and no equal-protection clause either, a codification just as sacred."

David W. Blight at The Atlantic responds to Donald Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship.

"Robber Baron Tactics and Imperial Belligerence"

"Mainstream political coverage has largely overlooked the deep affinities between the McKinley and Trump models of governance, thanks in no small part to the American press's inattention to the basics of political economy, not to mention its endemic historical illiteracy. More than that, though, Trump's cultish regard for McKinley gives the lie to the corporate media's central narrative about Trump and the MAGA movement—that it's a populist insurgency aimed at toppling sinister networks of elite influence."

Chris Lehman at The Nation compares Donald Trump to William McKinley.

And Michael Tomasky at The New Republic calls Trump an 1870s Redemptionist.

"The Reconstruction Constitution—One Very Different from the Constitution of 1787"

"In 1776, revolutionaries destroyed their old colonial governments. New constitutions called new states into being. In 1787, those new states ratified a new federal constitution and made a new nation. In 1867, revolutionaries again destroyed existing governments, and again new constitutions brought new states to life. Those new states ratified a new constitution, remaking America. The Reconstruction Act of March 2 started that process, and we owe more to it than to the Declaration of 1776."

At the Los Angeles Times, Kermit Roosevelt III argues that "March 2 is the true birthday of modern America."

Great Dissenters

"That is certainly true in the case of the Harlans, as well. But what emerged from the parsing and assessing was something unexpected. It was not a story about roots or bloodlines. Nor was it fundamentally about exploitation, the pain of inequality, or even the way slavery perverted basic emotions; it was about how, despite all of those things, a feeling grew up between Robert and John Harlan that was authentic and organically human: respect."

Politico runs an excerpt from Peter S. Canellos's The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero.

"We Are Still Catching Up to Him"

"Ultimately, however, these horrific murders and Johnson's blatant racism strengthened Stevens's hand, for they showed that nothing less than full and thorough revolution in the South would prevent that status quo antebellum from taking hold again. By 1867, when some Republicans had already started to lose interest in the whole project, Stevens told them pointedly that 'radicalism is the only thing now that will save and rescue us.' Levine charts the pivotal role Stevens played in helping to draft and pass the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, and other important measures of early Reconstruction. The novelty and import of these measures can hardly be overstated. As Eric Foner showed in his recent book The Second Founding, they were the first to give the federal government new powers—to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens—rather than take them away."

Richard Kreitner at The Baffler reviews Bruce Levine's Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice.

"An Uncomfortable Familiarity"

"'Weirdly, part of this is that with partisan gerrymandering, a lot of members of the House do not fear losing reelection—they're afraid of losing primaries,' Eric Foner, professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and an expert in Reconstruction and the Civil War, told TPM. 'With all these Republicans loaded into their districts, they figure they'll always win so there's no benefit to them to take a reasonable stance before primary season.'"

Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo talks to historians about the Republican Party's embrace of violence

Casey Michel at Politico discusses how President U.S. Grant can provide lessons for President Joe Biden now that "the Red Shirts of South Carolina have been replaced with the Red Hats of MAGA."

And at The Bulwark, Mona Charen writes that "Republicans Make Me Proud I Voted for Biden."

"If Trump's Presidency Can Be Said to Have a Defining Quality, It Might Well Be Chaos Itself"

"But much more importantly, for many Americans—especially in Trump's base—this rule-breaking was the whole point. Trump famously said in 2016 that his admirers would stick with him if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, and it's true that his patina of scandal-repellent Teflon would make even Ronald Reagan envious. Certainly, the polarized partisanship of Washington today explains the unwillingness of so many of his fellow Republicans to cross their own voters and break with Trump; had he come to power in 1974, he probably would have been sent packing as Nixon was. But beneath it all was, for many, a true loyalty to the man, an admiration of his style, and, ultimately, a good deal of contempt for civility and decency, transparency and expertise, constitutionality and democracy. Trump may now be headed for Mar-a-Lago—no small thing—but that contempt remains. Nearly two-thirds of Republican voters, even after January 6, say Trump acted responsibly after losing the election to Biden."

At Politico, David Greenberg asks, "What Will Trump's Presidency Mean to History?"

Zack Stanton asks David Blight if "Trumpism Is Becoming America's New 'Lost Cause.'"

And Hope Yen, Christopher Rugaber, and Calvin Woodward at the Associated Press fact check Trump's final speech as president.

"Engaged in Insurrection or Rebellion Against the Same, or Given Aid or Comfort to the Enemies Thereof"

"'Nobody really had heard about this except people like me, who study this era,' said Foner, a Columbia University professor and author of numerous books on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Abraham Lincoln. 'And then I had other historians emailing me saying, wouldn't Section Three apply here if Trump is guilty?'"

At The Seattle Times, Michael S. Rosenwald discusses using the Fourteenth Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office.

The Constitution's Lost Clause

"It's time to resurrect these 110 words of the most important amendment to the world's most important constitution. The authors of those words looked to Congress to ensure that the most fundamental aspect of American democracy—the right to vote—would be upheld. Today, with the closure of polling locations, spread of voter identification laws, and purging of voter rolls, the right to vote is, yet again, under siege."

Joshua Geltzer at Politico calls for enforcement of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"Too-La-Loo"

"A little over a decade later, however, African Americans like Douglass began making the glorious anniversary their own. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the nation's four million newly emancipated citizens transformed Independence Day into a celebration of black freedom. The Fourth became an almost exclusively African American holiday in the states of the former Confederacy—until white Southerners, after violently reasserting their dominance of the region, snuffed these black commemorations out."

In a 2018 Atlantic article, Ethan J. Kytle and Brian write about "When the Fourth of July Was a Black Holiday."

"One Has to Crush Bad Leaders at the Polls"

"It raises two big questions: Why wasn't Johnson thrown out of office for making those choices, and should he have been? She answers the first with erudition and cogency. The second she essentially leaves open, reminding us that even some of the lawmakers who reviled Johnson hesitated to remove him. Their ambivalence helps explain why no president has ever been convicted of 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' or why impeachment, often viewed as a necessity to stop a lawless leader, may prove almost impossible to execute successfully."

Michael Kazin at The New Republic reviews Brenda Wineapple's The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation.

"Portrays Douglass Unequivocally as a Hero While Also Revealing His Weaknesses"

"Ironically, his popularity is also due to ignorance. Some who commend him would probably cease doing so if they knew more about him. Frederick Douglass was a whirlwind of eloquence, imagination, and desperate striving as he sought to expose injustice and remedy its harms. All who praise him should know that part of what made him so distinctive are the tensions—indeed the contradictions—that he embraced."

Randall Kennedy in The Atlantic reviews David W. Blight's Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

"Which Is Precisely Why It Must Be Preserved and Discussed"

"When President Trump argued that attempts by activists to remove Confederate statues was a struggle to 'take away our culture,' it was clear the 'our' excluded large numbers of Americans. It was a noted contrast to Barack Obama's remarks at the opening of the Museum of African American History and Culture: '…African American history is not somehow separate from our larger American story, it's not the underside of the American story.' President Trump’s proud ignorance of American history needs a response—but African Americans have wrestled continuously with this problem, as they remind the nation of its darkest historical moments. "

Robert Greene II at Current Affairs discusses "Black Memory in the Age of Trump."

"But the Main Purpose of Militias—North and South—During This Period Was to Suppress Slave Rebellions"

"Throughout the 17th century, almost all the English colonies along the Eastern Seaboard passed legislation prohibiting women and slaves from owning guns and forbidding the sale of guns to native peoples. By the 18th century, gun ownership had become a defining feature of white masculinity in the English colonies and guns played an integral role in Colonial men's public displays of that masculinity.
"The public training exercises Colonial men participated in as part of their militia service were central to such displays and offered opportunities for them to participate in competitions to demonstrate their martial prowess. In many cases, guns were not only central to these demonstrations but were the prize for victory. The commander of the militia in Henrico County, Va., William Byrd, noted in his diary that he made a practice of awarding pistols to the men who won the competitions that took place on militia days. Such guns thus acted as material manifestations of a Colonial man's physical domination of his peers, augmenting his reputation in terms of property ownership and bodily prowess."

Nathan Wuertenberg at The Washington Post explains the origins of American gun culture.

And Thom Hartmann in a 2013 Truthout article explains how slave patrols ended up in the Second Amendment.

"A Successful Repulse of Enlightenment Liberalism by Romantic Reaction"

But Reconstruction has proven to be a more balky and diffuse era than either the Dunningites or the New Reconstructionists supposed. The crusaders, black and white, who hoped to build a new South out of the ashes of the old plantation order had no plans for a proletarian paradise. Quite to the contrary, they were plain and eager in their demand for a thorough-going capitalist effacement of the kingdom of the thousand-bale planters. Northern republicans had, after all, waged their war on behalf of free labor (an ideology whose greatest expositor has always been no one other than Eric Foner), and what they expected to create in the defeated Confederacy was a mirror image of small-producer manufacturing and independent family farms. The Union 'represents the principles of free labor,' declared a New York pamphlet, and only when 'the victory of the Northern society of free labor over the landed monopoly of the Southern aristocracy' was complete could the Civil War be declared over. 'Reconstruction,' added Frederick Douglass, will 'cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic.'
"No one offered a more vigorous second to that motion than the freedpeople, who wanted nothing so much as to become self-interested bourgeois owners of property."

Allen Carl Guelzo at History News Network calls Reconstruction a attempted "bourgeois revolution."

The Herrenvolk President

"But there's another way to read Trump's promise—not as a commitment to economic populism but as a statement of racial solidarity. Far from acting as a president for all Americans, he's governed explicitly as a president for white Americans and the racial reactionaries among them. He's spoken to their fear and fanned their anger, making his office a rallying point for those who see decline in multiracial democracy and his administration a tool for those who would turn the clock back on racial progress. If those Americans are the 'forgotten men and women' of President Trump's inaugural address, then he's been a man of his word."

Jamelle Bouie at Slate argues that Trumpism's "simmering pursuit of racial grievance has been its defining characteristic and threatens to be its most enduring achievement.

"A Certain Daring"

"But I argue that this was really the minor story of his presidency.
"The major story was that he was the foremost president protecting the four million African-Americans who had been enslaved prior to the war, who, under the 14th Amendment, became full-fledged American citizens, and under the 15th Amendment, had the right to vote.
"This provoked the most violent backlash in the South. The Ku Klux Klan conducted a reign of terror throughout the South. Grant repeatedly sent federal troops into the South in order to rein in the Klan, and then finally brought 3,000 indictments against the Klan to crush them.
"So, as Frederick Douglass said, Ulysses S. Grant was 'the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of out race.'
"I feel it's a great unknown story about Grant."

Jeffery Brown at the PBS Newshour interviews Ron Chernow about Chernow's new book, Grant.

"One Is Struck by the Continuing Relevance of His Writings"

"As for the future, Foner denounces the divisive politics of Donald Trump, but he also laments the failure of Barack Obama to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the Great Recession of 2008 to make fundamental changes in the nature of American capitalism. While disappointed with Obama as a mainstream Democrat who refused to challenge established corporate and banking interests, Foner sees promise in the 2016 Presidential campaign of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, observing that the type of fundamental change advanced by the Senator from Vermont is evidence of how American radicalism and a usable past have persisted into the present day. In discussing his teaching of a class on the radical tradition in America, Foner cautions that the key is to emphasize movements to promote social change and freedom rather than to concentrate upon individuals. Foner has retired from Columbia University, but let us hope that we will continue to benefit from his observations as a public intellectual in the pages of the Nation and other influential publications."

Ron Briley at History News Network reviews Eric Foner's Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History.