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."

"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.

"A Broader North American Story"

"These disasters and dreams rippled across the North American continent, rending Mexico apart and stitching Canada together at the same time. The story of the mid-nineteenth century, which we Americans usually think of as a tale of our own country's fracture and eventual rebirth, is better understood as an entire remolding of North America writ large—and one in which the Civil War plays a far more continental, and even global, role than previously understood."

At The Bulwark, Casey Michel reviews Alan Taylor's American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850–1873.

"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."

"Making This Promise Real Has Been the Work of Generations"

"The new birth of freedom that Abraham Lincoln extolled in the Gettysburg Address required the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which amounted to a second founding. It was this second founding that made the first founding worthy of being saved. Much like the founders before them, those who ushered in a second founding learned from experience, working to improve an imperfect Constitution.  At Gettysburg, Lincoln cast the nation as 'conceived in liberty' and 'dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.' Lincoln's effort was to complete the 'unfinished work' of the founding generation. If Lincoln cast this 'unfinished work' as an effort to restore America to its foundations, to a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, this was an effort to return to something real, but that never actually existed—only the promise of it did."

George Thomas at The Bulwark discusses "America's Imperfect Founding."

"There Remains a Hint of Sourness to It All"

"The process of mainstreaming a once renegade and often neglected holiday was bound to be sporadic and riddled with contradictions. It hasn't been lost on observers that Congress passed a Juneteenth bill without much trouble, but hasn't done anything meaningful to curb police power, which is what most of last year's demonstrators were actually asking for, let alone tried to pass ambitious legislation, like reparations, to address historical injustices. Gordon Granger couldn't have known, on his deathbed in Santa Fe, the debt that embattled 21st-century PR departments and politicians would owe him after he was gone. But he probably wouldn't be surprised that they, too, would be offering a degraded substitute for what people really needed."

Zak Cheney-Rice at New York describes "America's Hollow Embrace of Juneteenth."

"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.

"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.

"This Is the Largest Mass Execution in US History. It Was Also the Largest Act of Executive Clemency in US History"

"If he had been guided by short-term political calculations, Lincoln would have had every reason to simply allow the military tribunal’s order to execute all 303 Dakota men to take place. Lincoln was aware of the backwardness and racism that existed toward Native Americans, just as he was of racism toward blacks. Yet he did not make concessions to these tendencies, even within his own party. Lincoln's larger strategy involved elevating the consciousness of the population. His aim throughout the war was to tactfully mitigate the powerful racist tendencies that did exist and that were an objective block on his war policies."

Renae Cassimeda at the World Socialist Web Site tells the story of Abraham Lincoln and "the Dakota 38."

"Anti-Lincoln Obsession"

"The great stumbling-block issue for the Guardian and many other liberals was the right to self-determination. The paper believed that the south had the right to secede and to establish an independent state. It suspected that it would succeed. It thought, as Gladstone did, that this might hasten the end of slavery–and it may have been right, since no slave society, including Cuba and Brazil, survived into the 20th century. Above all, though, the paper wanted to be consistent. It had supported independence for the Slavs, the Hungarians, the Italians and the Egyptians–so why not for the Confederates, too?"

In a 2011 article, Martin Kettle reviews the positions taken in The Guardian during the U.S. Civil War.

"Beneath the State's Progressive Veneer Lies a Dark and Surprisingly Contemporary History"

"When the Civil War erupted between North and South in 1861, a wave of secessionist scares swept across the West. Los Angeles County was the epicenter of California disunionism. Hundreds of Southern-sympathizing Angelenos fled east to join Confederate armies, while an even larger number remained to menace federal control over the region. They openly bullied and brawled with Union soldiers, joined secessionist secret societies, hurrahed Jefferson Davis and his generals, and voted into office the avowed enemies of the Lincoln administration. The threat became so dire that Union authorities constructed a large military garrison outside Los Angeles, and arrested a number of local secessionists, to prevent the region from slipping into rebel hands."

Kevin Waite at The New Republic discusses "California’s Forgotten Confederate History."

"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."

"To Obey the Law While Respecting Themselves"

"In that sense, Lincoln was the embodiment of America's long struggle to remake itself as a morally coherent nation. Under his leadership, the Civil War finally resolved the problem of fugitive slaves by destroying the institution from which they had fled. By the time of his death, some 4 million black Americans were no longer at risk of forcible return to their erstwhile masters. They had entered the limbo between the privations of their past and the future promise of American life—a state of suspension in which millions of black Americans still live."

Andrew Delbanco at The Atlantic connects the 1850s to today.

"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."

"Often Had the United States on His Mind"

"To read Marx is to wrestle with the modern world that capitalism has made. This includes modern America—especially modern America. Because the US is the nation in world history most committed to capitalism, and because Marx is the world's most enduring theorist of capitalism, Marx is a veritable American alter ego."

Andrew Hartman at Jacobin marks Karl Marx's bicentennial

As does The Economist.

"Mutually Assured Massacre"

"In retrospect, I believe Lott's work and those who built upon it played a similar role in the post-Columbine evolution of the firearms debate. (And to be clear, I'm not equating them substantively. I'm talking about the need for a 'positive good' version of pro-gun advocacy.) Indeed, Lott's first article was published in 1997 and his first book More Guns Less Crime in 1998, just a year before the Columbine Massacre in 1999. Though his first work just preceded Columbine, it filled a critical, necessary role for 'gun rights' advocates in the post-Columbine world. The NRA wasn't always against all gun restrictions. In the 1980s and 1990s, it didn't oppose some very limited restrictions. That changed over the course of the 1990s, for a variety of reasons. Paradoxically, I believe one reason was the historic crime drop of the latter half of the 1990s. As long as crime seems out of control a lot of ordinary people want a gun to protect themselves, regardless of the larger societal impact, regardless of studies that might suggest you're more likely to be killed by your own gun than saved by it."

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo explains how the gun lobby developed a "positive good" argument.

"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."

"During My Lifetime, the Love of Guns Has Become a Fetish"

"So that's how we got here. The NRA has won. Yet the group and its compatriots seem no less paranoid or angry, still convinced that tyranny is right around the corner and that federal agents are coming for their guns. The wholesale confiscation of guns was never seriously bruited in the United States. Through the 1980s, even most conservatives considered the fear of confiscation to be screwball paranoia, relegated to self-published tracts like  Behold a Pale Horse, which imagined a 'patriot data bank' kept by the government, 'consist[ing] of information collected about American patriots, men and women who are most likely to resist the destruction of our Constitution and the formation of the totalitarian police state under the New World Order.' Now, however, thanks to the NRA, it's the rare Republican leader who doesn't encourage the confiscation fantasy."

Slate runs an excerpt from Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History.

Later it adds another excerpt about Oprah Winfrey.

And adds yet another on the history of right-wing conspiracism since the 1960s.