The Republic of Texas

by on February 26, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Republicans were worried as 1870 approached. The Three Fifths Compromise of the Constitution limited how many Representatives the Southern States received from their slave population, but they had still managed to greatly influence national politics in the half century since the Democrats had split from the First Republican Party. The Third Republican Party feared that if the Democrats continued to seek ways to disenfranchise their freedmen, the 1870 census would simply give them what they had always wanted. Full representation accounting for all the people in their States, but with the votes controlled entirely by the former slave owners. The combined population of the Southern States would grant them domination of national politics should that happen. And Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia were about to reenter the Union and add their representatives to the mix. The Republicans had to stave off the disenfranchisement of the former slaves if they were going to have any chance of placing a cork in the Democrats’ political machine. So they passed the 15th Amendment that banned taking away anybody’s vote based on race, color, or their former status as slaves.

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The Republic of Texas

by on February 25, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The election of 1868 was effectively a war without name. Former Confederate leaders and officers could not vote, while the freed slaves were all but guaranteed to vote in overwhelming numbers for Union General Grant who had helped free them. No Confederates could run for office, so the political tables were balanced between the Republicans advocating permanent suffrage for all freedmen and the Northern Democrats campaigning for the right of States to make their own decisions on who could be allowed to vote. And three States, including Texas, had not yet been welcomed back into the Union, so they could not vote at all. Which in some ways was very good for Texas. They avoided the worst of the political violence that washed through the other Southern States as the Ku Klux Klan hunted down or assassinated thousands of Republicans, burned down churches, schools, and homes, and did everything they could to keep people from picking up a Republican ballot on election day. Grant won despite the campaign of voter suppression and pushed Radical Reconstruction into the Southern States straight to the hilt.

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Iwo Jima

by on February 24, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

We invaded Iwo Jima seventy-five years ago in our drive to advance to the Japanese Home Islanders during World War II. Over 500 ships and 110,000 men would assault the tiny island. We lost one ship, with two others damaged, and nearly 20,000 of our men were injured. Nearly 7,000 died, including half of those in this immortal picture taken atop Mount Suribachi. It took over a month to kill 18,000 dug in Japanese defenders, and another three months to dig out most of the 3,000 that remained in hiding. The last two Japanese soldiers finally surrendered four years later.

Seventy-five years ago, the photographer nearly missed it because he was busy piling rocks when he realized the flag was going up. He grabbed his camera and snapped the photo without even taking time to look through the viewfinder. He just clicked it, hoped it came out, and his picture became one of the most famous photographs ever taken.

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The Republic of Texas

by on February 23, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The administration Democrat President Johnson inherited after Republican President Lincoln’s assassination was aggressive in the form of Reconstruction it wanted to pursue. The Republicans wanted to erase Slavery and replace it with a true Free Society forever divorced from the one that came before. Johnson wished a far more modest Reconstruction that would allow the Southern States to map their own futures, and further wished to reshape his administration in his image. So the Republicans passed a law that forbade him from removing anyone the President and the Senate had placed in position without first asking the Senate to agree. When President Johnson dismissed Secretary of War Stanton in a direct challenge to the law they had passed over his veto, the House of Representatives voted to Impeach him. The Senate failed to convict him by one vote, and he remained in office until the end of the term he and Lincoln had been elected to, but his political star had been brought low. Even the Democrats did not want him, and the election of 1868 proceeded on without him.

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The Republic of Texas

by on February 22, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Republicans ran the table in the post-victory election of 1866. They achieved two thirds majorities in both Houses, enough to override any vetoes from President Johnson, and quickly suspended the civilian governments in the Southern States. They enacted a five year suspension of voting rights for former Confederate leaders and officers, and passed the Fourteenth Amendment that clearly stated the freedmen were full citizens of the United States, and could not be deprived of their life, liberty, or property without due process and equal protection. It reapportioned Representatives by counting all the free men over twenty five years of age in each State. It banned former Confederates from government service, and wrote off the debts incurred by those in rebellion or insurrection. And in a move that was particularly stunning, it gave Congress itself the power to enforce the Amendment. A power they quickly sought to use as they pressed what historians called the Radical Reconstruction Plan into the Southern States.

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