Accession : "He Has..." - A Tale of Two Conspiracy Theories

Accession : "He Has... , He Has... , He Has..." 

- A Tale of Two Conspiracy Theories

An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown

English Bill of Rights 1689

Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster, lawfully, fully and freely representing all the estates of the people of this realm, did upon the thirteenth day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty-eight [old style date] present unto their Majesties, then called and known by the names and style of William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, being present in their proper persons, a certain declaration in writing made by the said Lords and Commons in the words following, viz.:

Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom; 

• By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws and the execution of laws without consent of Parliament;

• By committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for humbly petitioning to be excused from concurring to the said assumed power;

• By issuing and causing to be executed a commission under the great seal for erecting a court called the Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes;

• By levying money for and to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative for other time and in other manner than the same was granted by Parliament;

• By raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without consent of Parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law;

• By causing several good subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law;

• By violating the freedom of election of members to serve in Parliament;

• By prosecutions in the Court of King's Bench for matters and causes cognizable only in Parliament, and by divers other arbitrary and illegal courses;

• And whereas of late years partial corrupt and unqualified persons have been returned and served on juries in trials, and particularly divers jurors in trials for high treason which were not freeholders;

• And excessive bail hath been required of persons committed in criminal cases to elude the benefit of the laws made for the liberty of the subjects;

• And excessive fines have been imposed;

• And illegal and cruel punishments inflicted;

• And several grants and promises made of fines and forfeitures before any conviction or judgment against the persons upon whom the same were to be levied;

All which are utterly and directly contrary to the known laws and statutes and freedom of this realm;

And whereas the said late King James the Second having abdicated the government and the throne being thereby vacant, his Highness the prince of Orange (whom it hath pleased Almighty God to make the glorious instrument of delivering this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power) did (by the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and divers principal persons of the Commons) cause letters to be written to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal being Protestants, and other letters to the several counties, cities, universities, boroughs and cinque ports, for the choosing of such persons to represent them as were of right to be sent to Parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon the two and twentieth day of January in this year one thousand six hundred eighty and eight [old style date], in order to such an establishment as that their religion, laws and liberties might not again be in danger of being subverted, upon which letters elections having been accordingly made; 

And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare 

That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;

That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal;

That the commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious;

That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;

That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;

That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;

That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;

That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;

That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;

That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders;

That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void;

And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.

And they do claim, demand and insist upon all and singular the premises as their undoubted rights and liberties, and that no declarations, judgments, doings or proceedings to the prejudice of the people in any of the said premises ought in any wise to be drawn hereafter into consequence or example; to which demand of their rights they are particularly encouraged by the declaration of his Highness the prince of Orange as being the only means for obtaining a full redress and remedy therein. Having therefore an entire confidence that his said Highness the prince of Orange will perfect the deliverance so far advanced by him, and will still preserve them from the violation of their rights which they have here asserted, and from all other attempts upon their religion, rights and liberties, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster do resolve that William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, be and be declared king and queen of England, France and Ireland and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them, the said prince and princess, during their lives and the life of the survivor to them, and that the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in and executed by the said prince of Orange in the names of the said prince and princess during their joint lives, and after their deceases the said crown and royal dignity of the same kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said princess, and for default of such issue to the Princess Anne of Denmark and the heirs of her body, and for default of such issue to the heirs of the body of the said prince of Orange. And the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do pray the said prince and princess to accept the same accordingly. 

And that the oaths hereafter mentioned be taken by all persons of whom the oaths have allegiance and supremacy might be required by law, instead of them; and that the said oaths of allegiance and supremacy be abrogated.

I, A.B., do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. So help me God. 

I, A.B., do swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure as impious and heretical this damnable doctrine and position, that princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope or any authority of the see of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or any other whatsoever. And I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm. So help me God.

Upon which their said Majesties did accept the crown and royal dignity of the kingdoms of England, France and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the resolution and desire of the said Lords and Commons contained in the said declaration. And thereupon their Majesties were pleased that the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, being the two Houses of Parliament, should continue to sit, and with their Majesties' royal concurrence make effectual provision for the settlement of the religion, laws and liberties of this kingdom, so that the same for the future might not be in danger again of being subverted, to which the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons did agree, and proceed to act accordingly.

Now in pursuance of the premises the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled, for the ratifying, confirming and establishing the said declaration and the articles, clauses, matters and things therein contained by the force of law made in due form by authority of Parliament, do pray that it may be declared and enacted that all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and claimed in the said declaration are the true, ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom, and so shall be esteemed, allowed, adjudged, deemed and taken to be; and that all and every the particulars aforesaid shall be firmly and strictly holden and observed as they are expressed in the said declaration, and all officers and ministers whatsoever shall serve their Majesties and their successors according to the same in all time to come. And the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, seriously considering how it hath pleased Almighty God in his marvellous providence and merciful goodness to this nation to provide and preserve their said Majesties' royal persons most happily to reign over us upon the throne of their ancestors, for which they render unto him from the bottom of their hearts their humblest thanks and praises, do truly, firmly, assuredly and in the sincerity of their hearts think, and do hereby recognize, acknowledge and declare, that King James the Second having abdicated the government, and their Majesties having accepted the crown and royal dignity as aforesaid, their said Majesties did become, were, are and of right ought to be by the laws of this realm our sovereign liege lord and lady, king and queen of England, France and Ireland and the dominions thereunto belonging, in and to whose princely persons the royal state, crown and dignity of the said realms with all honours, styles, titles, regalities, prerogatives, powers, jurisdictions and authorities to the same belonging and appertaining are most fully, rightfully and entirely invested and incorporated, united and annexed. And for preventing all questions and divisions in this realm by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, and for preserving a certainty in the succession thereof, in and upon which the unity, peace, tranquility and safety of this nation doth under God wholly consist and depend, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do beseech their Majesties that it may be enacted, established and declared, that the crown and regal government of the said kingdoms and dominions, with all and singular the premises thereunto belonging and appertaining, shall be and continue to their said Majesties and the survivor of them during their lives and the life of the survivor of them, and that the entire, perfect and full exercise of the regal power and government be only in and executed by his Majesty in the names of both their Majesties during their joint lives; and after their deceases the said crown and premises shall be and remain to the heirs of the body of her Majesty, and for default of such issue to her Royal Highness the Princess Anne of Denmark and the heirs of the body of his said Majesty; and thereunto the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do in the name of all the people aforesaid most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever, and do faithfully promise that they will stand to, maintain and defend their said Majesties, and also the limitation and succession of the crown herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their powers with their lives and estates against all persons whatsoever that shall attempt anything to the contrary. And whereas it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish prince, or by any king or queen marrying a papist, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do further pray that it may be enacted, that all and every person and persons that is, are or shall be reconciled to or shall hold communion with the see or Church of Rome, or shall profess the popish religion, or shall marry a papist, shall be excluded and be for ever incapable to inherit, possess or enjoy the crown and government of this realm and Ireland and the dominions thereunto belonging or any part of the same, or to have, use or exercise any regal power, authority or jurisdiction within the same; and in all and every such case or cases the people of these realms shall be and are hereby absolved of their allegiance; and the said crown and government shall from time to time descend to and be enjoyed by such person or persons being Protestants as should have inherited and enjoyed the same in case the said person or persons so reconciled, holding communion or professing or marrying as aforesaid were naturally dead; and that every king and queen of this realm who at any time hereafter shall come to and succeed in the imperial crown of this kingdom shall on the first day of the meeting of the first Parliament next after his or her coming to the crown, sitting in his or her throne in the House of Peers in the presence of the Lords and Commons therein assembled, or at his or her coronation before such person or persons who shall administer the coronation oath to him or her at the time of his or her taking the said oath (which shall first happen), make, subscribe and audibly repeat the declaration mentioned in the statute made in the thirtieth year of the reign of King Charles the Second entitled, _An Act for the more effectual preserving the king's person and government by disabling papists from sitting in either House of Parliament._ But if it shall happen that such king or queen upon his or her succession to the crown of this realm shall be under the age of twelve years, then every such king or queen shall make, subscribe and audibly repeat the same declaration at his or her coronation or the first day of the meeting of the first Parliament as aforesaid which shall first happen after such king or queen shall have attained the said age of twelve years. All which their Majesties are contented and pleased shall be declared, enacted and established by authority of this present Parliament, and shall stand, remain and be the law of this realm for ever; and the same are by their said Majesties, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled and by the authority of the same, declared, enacted and established accordingly.

II. And be it further declared and enacted by the authority aforesaid, that from and after this present session of Parliament no dispensation by _non obstante_ of or to any statute or any part thereof shall be allowed, but that the same shall be held void and of no effect, except a dispensation be allowed of in such statute, and except in such cases as shall be specially provided for by one or more bill or bills to be passed during this present session of Parliament. 

III. Provided that no charter or grant or pardon granted before the three and twentieth day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty-nine shall be any ways impeached or invalidated by this Act, but that the same shall be and remain of the same force and effect in law and no other than as if this Act had never been made.

Avalon Project - Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. 

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

• He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

• He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

• He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.

• He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

• He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

• He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

• He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

• He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

• He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

• For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

• For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

• For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

• For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

• For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

• For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

• For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

• For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

• He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

• He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

• He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

• He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. 

[Signed by]  JOHN HANCOCK[President] 

New Hampshire 
JOSIAH BARTLETT, 
WM. WHIPPLE, 
MATTHEW THORNTON.

Massachusetts Bay
SAML. ADAMS,
JOHN ADAMS,
ROBT. TREAT PAINE,
ELBRIDGE GERRY

Rhode Island
STEP. HOPKINS,
WILLIAM ELLERY.

Connecticut
ROGER SHERMAN, 
SAM'EL HUNTINGTON, 
WM. WILLIAMS, 
OLIVER WOLCOTT.

New York
WM. FLOYD, 
PHIL. LIVINGSTON, 
FRANS. LEWIS, 
LEWIS MORRIS.

New Jersey
RICHD. STOCKTON, 
JNO. WITHERSPOON, 
FRAS. HOPKINSON, 
JOHN HART, 
ABRA. CLARK.

Pennsylvania
ROBT. MORRIS
BENJAMIN RUSH,
BENJA. FRANKLIN,
JOHN MORTON,
GEO. CLYMER,
JAS. SMITH,
GEO. TAYLOR,
JAMES WILSON,
GEO. ROSS.

Delaware 
CAESAR RODNEY, 
GEO. READ, 
THO. M'KEAN.

Maryland
SAMUEL CHASE,
WM. PACA,
THOS. STONE,
CHARLES CARROLL of Carrollton.

Virginia
GEORGE WYTHE,
RICHARD HENRY LEE,
TH. JEFFERSON,
BENJA. HARRISON,
THS. NELSON, JR.,
FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,
CARTER BRAXTON.

North Carolina
WM. HOOPER,
JOSEPH HEWES,
JOHN PENN.

South Carolina
EDWARD RUTLEDGE,
THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,
THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,
ARTHUR MIDDLETON.

Georgia
BUTTON GWINNETT,
LYMAN HALL,
GEO. WALTON.

NOTE.-Mr. Ferdinand Jefferson, Keeper of the Rolls in the Department of State, at Washington, says: " The names of the signers are spelt above as in the facsimile of the original, but the punctuation of them is not always the same; neither do the names of the States appear in the facsimile of the original. The names of the signers of each State are grouped together in the facsimile of the original, except the name of Matthew Thornton, which follows that of Oliver Wolcott."-Revised Statutes of the United States, 2d edition, 1878, p. 6.

Source: Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States. Government Printing Office, 1927.  House Document No. 398.  Selected, Arranged and Indexed by Charles C. Tansill

Executive Privilege

Executive Privilege.

If I am holding The Law (physically) in my hands, it does not apply to me.

Because I am The EXECUTOR of The Law - 

The Chief Executive.

The Law says 

"Thou Shalt Not Kill; 

Thou Shalt Not Worship False Idols."

How?, Through Whom? and When? is The Law to be enforced...?

By the Soverign Paramount, the Head of State, and his Officers.

In the Name of :

• God

• St. Michael and 

• St. George

I give the Right to Bear Arms and the Power to Mete Justice.

Nemesis and The Dragon : Are Xenomorphs Designed to be Noble?

Do you know what "Nemesis" means? 

A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. 

Personified in this case by a 'orrible cunt... 

Me.

"If you breathe on a horses nostrils, you can make him yours for life;

But you have to get close enough first..."

"If you breathe on a horses nostrils, you can make him yours for life;

But you have to get close enough first..."

Question: 

What was the Masonic signal of distress used by the grocer B. F. Morgan when Dillinger tried to rob him in 1924?

Answer: 

It consists in holding your arms outward, bent upward 90 degrees at the elbow, and shouting, 

"Will nobody help the widow's son?"

Ash: 

There is a clause in the contract which specifically states any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated. 

Parker: 

I don't wanna hear it... 

Brett: 

We don't know if it's intelligent. 

Parker: 

I wanna go home and party. 

Dallas: 

Parker, will you just listen to the man? 

Ash: 

On penalty of total forfeiture of shares. No money. 

Dallas: 

You got that? 

Parker: [chuckling] 

Well, yeah. 

Dallas: 

All right, we're going in. 

Parker: [to Brett] 

Yeah, we're going in, aren't we?

Cameron - On the Square

Cameron - On the Level

Cameron - Upright and True

Strange Days (1995)

What's Opera, Doc?

Liberetto :

Elmer: 

Be vewy quiet. 
I'm hunting wabbits.

(spoken) 

WABBIT TWACKS!! WABBIT HOLE!!

(thrusting spear) 

KILL THE WABBIT! 
KILL THE WABBIT! 
KILL THE WABBIT!

Bugs (spoken): 

Kill the wabbit?

Elmer: 

YO HO HO! 

YO HO HO! 

YO HO...

Bugs: 

Oh mighty warrior of great fighting stock

Might I inquire to ask nyeh... What's up, Doc..?

Elmer: 

I'm going to kill the wabbit!

Bugs: 

O mighty warrior, 'twill be quite a task

How will you do it, might I inquire to ask?

E: 

I will do it with my spear and magic hewmet.

B: 

Spear and magic hewmet?

E: 

Spear and magic hewmet.

B: 

Magic hewmet?

E: 

Magic hewmet!

B (spoken, disparagingly): 

Magic hewmet....

E: 

Yes, magic hewmet, 
and I Will give you a sample!

(exit Bugs at warp speed)

E (spoken): 

That was the wabbit!

(Then a chase, followed by:)

E: 

Oh, Bwoonhilda, 

you're so wovely.

B: 

Yes, I know it, 

I can't help it.

E: 

Oh, Bwoonhilda, 

be my wove...

(A dance, then... )

E: 

Weturn, my wove... 

a fire burning inside me...

B: 

Return my luv, 

I want you always bee-side me.

E: 

Wove wike ours must be...

B: 

Made fer you, and fer me...

E: 

Return, won't you return my love... 
For my love is yours.

(As they embrace, Bug's helm falls to the ground... revealing his ears)

Elmer (spoken, outraged): 

I'll KILL the wabbit!!

E (spoken): 

North winds bwow, 
South winds bwow. 
Typhoons, 
Hurricanes...

SMOG!!!!!!

E (spoken): 

Thunder, wigtning, stwike the wabbit!!

(Lightning flashes, striking in the distance -- now moving in, we see

the limp and lifeless form of Bugs -- a drop of water clings to a

crushed flower)

E: 

What have I done?.... 
I've killed the wabbit... 
Poor wittle bunny...
Poor widdle wabbit.....

(sob)

(Bugs is carried off in Elmer's arms... )

B (spoken): 

Well, what did you expect from an opera?

A Happy Ending..?

------------------- The End... That's all Folks -------------

FreXit : Chanticleerix

The Treaty of Rome

Andy

hist-119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877

Chapter 1. Introduction [00:00:00]

Professor David Blight: So what is the engine of history? I beg your attention. There's a simple question for you, what is the engine of history? Don't you like unanswerable questions? Is the engine of history politics, the inherent, natural, eternal quest of people to bend other people's wills and take power? Or is the engine of history economics, the grinding, on-the-ground process by which people carve out livelihoods over against other people's competition for the same livelihoods? It doesn't seem to matter what history you study, or where you look, history always somehow comes around to this nexus, this collision, between forces of political power and forces of economics, and our job is always somehow to discern between them and how they mix. Now often, of course, the answer is that it's all one and the same thing.

Listen to this passage by a freedman in the South named Bailey Wyatt. He got up and made a speech at a freedmen's political meeting. This was actually an early Union League meeting, in 1866. It was about political organizing in the South. But know what Bailey gets up and says, as it was recorded. It was a meeting in Yorktown, Virginia. 

Bailey Wyatt, former slave, he's sort of announcing the freed people's grievances at a political gathering. He says: "We now as a people desires to be elevated, and we desires to do all we can to be educated, and we hope our friends will aid us all they can. I may state to all our friends and to all our enemies that we has a right to the land where we are located. Why? I'll tell you. Our wives, our children, our husbands, has been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locates upon. For that reason we have a divine right to the land. And then didn't we clear the lands and raise the crops of corn and of cotton and of tobacco and of rice and of sugar and of everything? And then didn't them large cities in the North grow up on the cotton and the sugars and the rice that we made? Yes, I appeal to the South and to the North, if I hasn't spoken the words of the truth. I say they have grown rich, and my people are poor." 

At a political rally, he makes an aggressive economic speech about the labor theory of value. He didn't need to read to John Locke. He'd never read Second Treatise on Government. He hadn't had a political philosophy course, but he absolutely understood. He called it the divine right — the labor theory of value. If I labor to improve that land, it's mine. In that, in the simplicity, in the agony and the beauty of Bailey Wyatt's statement, you have a lot of what was at stake in Reconstruction, and you have a lot about what the political dilemma was, in delivering on Bailey Wyatt's claim to a divine right to the land.

Chapter 2. Implications of the Four Reconstruction Acts [00:04:20]

All right, back to Washington, back to the politics, at least for a few minutes, and then I want to shift us south to this story of the on-the-ground economics of Reconstruction, especially this massive transformation of a slave labor economy into some kind of free labor economy that quickly evolves, of course — and you know this, at least the contours of it, from reading Foner — it evolves eventually, rather quickly, into a system of tenant farming and a system of sharecropping and a system ultimately of a kind of debt peonage. 

But in Washington, the political triumph of the Radical Republicans comes in that veto-proof Congress they produced in the fall elections of 1866. 

And in 1867 they passed the First Reconstruction Act, followed after that, in '67 and early '68, by three more Reconstruction Acts, simply called the Second, Third, and Fourth Reconstruction Acts. 

And it was this system by which the southern states, the ex-Confederate states, were actually readmitted to the Union. The great possibilities — Foner addresses over and over — in this experiment in racial democracy, this experiment in increasing democratic forms of government and institutions in the South, through the transplanting of the Republican Party into those ex-Confederate states, is rooted in this document.

Those are the five — I don't know if you can read it in the back, can read that in the back? Yeah, all right, I love this machine, it makes me look good. But those are the five — I'm not going to, well, maybe I will. 

The first part of the First Reconstruction Act divided the South into five military districts. 

The Second said that each district would be commanded by a General, not below the rank of Brigadier-General, and an adequate military force. That part will never really come off, and it wasn't even begun. 

The Third, the Commanding General would supervise — a General would supervise election of delegates to state conventions, and those new state conventions would write these new state constitutions for the Southern states. 

Note the process now. This is not Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan, and it sure as hell isn't Andrew Johnson's "that portion who are loyal" plan. 

All adult males, regardless of color, who were not disfranchised for participation in the war, were eligible to vote, and the constitutions had to provide for male Negro suffrage, in the South. 

You'll note, the Republicans, as I've said before, are stepping clear of black suffrage in the North, and they're going to do it again in the Fifteenth Amendment; we'll come back to that Thursday. 

And finally, when a majority of the voters ratified a constitution, and when Congress approved it — the President has virtually no role in this, this is Congressional Reconstruction; when a state had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, no choice, the equal protection clause, the citizenship amendment — you must accept, then and only then, a state would be readmitted to the Union.

If you put it all in one large pill, it's a very big pill for the ex-Confederate states to swallow, and at least politically, on the surface, it is exactly what they had to swallow in order to be readmitted to the Union. 

And between 1866 — actually Tennessee was readmitted before this act even passed, in a shifty, strange manner; it had to be readmitted again after that — but between '66 and 1870, the eleven former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union under the Radical Reconstruction Plan of the Congressional Republicans. 

Now, those three subsequent Reconstruction Acts are very important. And by the way, every one of these acts, including the renewal each year of the Freedmen's Bureau, the renewal — I mean, the first Civil Rights Act — fifteen different bills developing a Reconstruction plan, passed by Congress, were all vetoed between 1866 and '68 by Andrew Johnson. 

I may have said this before, more vetoes by a president of the United States than all previous American presidents put together. 

You could call this a constitutional crisis; it was. 

You could call it a breakdown in federalism.

 You could call it whatever you want. 

But it's government by veto and override of veto. 

Every time A.J. vetoed a Reconstruction Act, Congress, in its two-thirds majority, Republicans in both houses, overrode his veto. 

We've never had a government operate like this, with this many vetoes, an override of vetoes, in such a concentrated period of time. 

That's how Reconstruction was actually put in place politically.

The Second Reconstruction Act gave details for how those military commanders were supposed to conduct their districts. The Third Reconstruction Act, passed summer of '67, set up what were called registration boards, which were empowered to deny voting rights to anyone they felt were not taking loyalty oaths in good faith; they're still trying to enforce this loyalty oath. And the Fourth Reconstruction Act, not passed until spring of '68, simply said that a majority of votes cast would be sufficient to put a new constitution into effect, not a majority of those Southerners who had voted in 1860. 

You'll note some erosion there, in the radicalism of the radical plan. There are a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which is they were in the midst, at that point, of trying to impeach Andrew Johnson.

Chapter 3. The Impeachment Process for Andrew Johnson [00:10:49]

Now, I wish I had an entire lecture — well I do have an entire lecture — to give you on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, but I'm going to do it quickly, and I'd be more than happy in our review session in a couple of weeks, or any other time, to come back to it. 

It's the first great model we have of the impeachment of a President, of course, in our history. We've had another one, since. We used to think it would never, ever, ever happen again after the Nixon debacle. Here I go, I'm straying into my tangent. Believe it or not I was — I'm giving away my age here — but I was a high school teacher the year Richard Nixon was almost impeached, and I had prepared for months to teach my students about impeachment, and then the SOB resigned. 

[Laughter] And it just took all the fun out of the early 1970s. 

[Laughter] But it was a great civics lesson. 

We got that civics lesson over again because of Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern, and because of what "is" or "was" or whatever the hell it was he said to the Grand Jury.

You need to know a couple of things though about the Constitution, if you don't already know it. 

There actually are four, well five, provisions about impeachment in the Constitution. 

It's the most awesome power in the Constitution, in some ways, and it isn't wielded very often. The authority to impeach, of course, rests with the House of Representatives. 

It is the House of Representatives, through its judiciary committee, that investigates grounds for impeachment of a president or a cabinet official or a Supreme Court justice. It is the House of Representatives that then brings articles of impeachment, which in effect are like an indictment, although they are a political indictment and never intended to be a legal indictment. 

The third part of the Constitution, Article 1, Section 3, Clause 6, gives the U.S. Senate the power to sit as the jury, the judicial function of trying a person under impeachment charges. 

The House charges, the Senate judges. 

Only the Senate, in its collective vote, can determine guilt or innocence, and it takes — they kept this an awesome power and difficult to use — it takes a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate to impeach and remove a president or other official. 

And then comes the punishment clause, Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7 of the Constitution: judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any other office of honor, trust, or profit, under the United States, but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment according to law. 

You could still be tried in a criminal court after you're impeached, although we've never gotten that far. 

But the only power the Senate has is removal. 

IF THE PRESIDENT DOES IT, THAT MEANS IT IS NOT ILLEGAL.

And that is exactly what the Radical Republicans are trying to do to Andrew Johnson, and that he provokes them to do, over and over, in 1867 and early 1868. 

There is one other feature in the Constitution, and that is of course the President's pardon power: the President shall have the power to pardon in all cases, except impeachment. 

Now, I don't — you don't remember Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. 

I do. 

Probably cost Gerald Ford election.

All right, in brief, what happened in the Johnson impeachment — and he was impeached, he simply wasn't removed from office — is what you had is a process, through four and five different — depends on how you count them — stages in the political development of this crisis of authority and power over who's going to run Reconstruction. 

Now there are numerous theories, historical interpretations, about why Johnson was finally impeached by the Republicans. 

It never would have happened if Andrew Johnson would've, in any way, just backed off and admitted that he was probably going to be a lame duck president. 

One theory is Johnson's personal behavior, as an explanation for his impeachment. His personal habits were hardly fetching. His Swing Around the Circle in the fall of 1866 was an utter embarrassment to the presidency. His likening himself to Jesus; his constant ranting on the Radical Republicans as traitors, calling them Judas. He is called in the press a "presidential ass," at various times during that tour. That's one part of it, the sort of personal provocations of his style.

But a second explanation, that I think holds much more weight, is that Johnson and the Radical Republicans simply had fundamentally different constitutional conceptions of the meaning of the war and the meaning and the nature of Reconstruction policy. 

Johnson, you'll remember, wanted a rapid, quick, presidential, executive Reconstruction, with virtually no alteration of the Constitution and utterly no changes in black civil and political rights. His fifteen vetoes and the overrides of those vetoes — in that process of veto and override, you really have the origins, the roots, the essence of why the Radicals finally decided the best thing in their political interest to do with Andrew Johnson was to remove him. 

A third theory is — and there's something to this, although I don't think it explains it all by any means — is what one historian has called the radical plot thesis, just sheer partisan politics, just sheer partisan hatreds. This guy was an old Jacksonian Democrat, he was a southern Democrat, as the president, and the Republicans not only wanted him out of the way of their Reconstruction plans, they wanted the Democratic Party ruined, if they could do it. Some of them did want that. 

Some of the leaders of the impeachment movement in the House — James Ashley, Benjamin Butler, George Boutwell and others — were sometimes referred to, even in their friendly press, as one Republican paper put it, "as baleful a trio of buzzards as ever perched in the House of Representatives." And they were accused, as sometimes politicians are accused today, of a witch-hunt. They investigated everything about Johnson, his bank accounts, allegations that he had tried to betray Tennessee during the Civil War — which were nonsense — and even that he had somehow participated in the Booth conspiracy to kill Lincoln — utter nonsense.

The real explanation here, if there's smoke — I mean if there's fire, where the smoke comes from on this radical plot thesis against Johnson, is this idea that there were some Radical Republicans here who saw a big opening, not only to remake the South, to Yankeeize the South — and they are interested in doing that, and not always of bad motives; the South needed schools, desperately; it needed some kind of economic revival, desperately; it needed its harbors dredged desperately. It needed an activist government to do all of this. 

But there were some Radical Republicans who saw a chance here to rearrange constitutional powers, to use the feeling abroad against Andrew Johnson, to tip the balance of power toward the Congress, as never before, in the nature of the federal government. 

Removing Johnson would be removing an obstacle to congressional hegemony over the federal government. 

And now there's some element here too, of the fact that you need to remember who actually would've replaced Andrew Johnson if he had been removed from office. There is no vice-president. He had been Lincoln's vice-president. There is no vice-president. We didn't have the amendment, which comes later, in the twentieth century, which allows a new president who takes over to appoint his vice-president. 

So in the absence of any vice-president, who would've become president? Come on, that's a great trivia question, use this one out at the bar. No one will know it. Louder, I can't hear you.

Students: Speaker of the House.

Professor David Blight: No. President Pro Tem of the Senate — bingo — who was Benjamin Wade, a Radical Republican from Ohio, and one of the leaders of the impeachment movement; a little unsavory. 

You're organizing to impeach the president; oh by the way, I'll be the next president. 

And fourth and last, but not least, what's at stake in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson — and I'm going to spare you all the sordid, wonderful, tasty, lovely details of the corruption and skullduggery and scandal and payments that went on, in the final vote in the Senate, that moved seven Republicans over to acquittal and saved A.J.'s hide. I'm going to spare you all that wonderful, lovely, corruption. It's really beautiful, awful, ugly stuff. Money, offices. 

If you read John Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. We all love to love Jack Kennedy, and Ted Sorenson, who was his speech writer, was one of the greatest speech writers ever, and Ted Sorenson wrote that book, Profiles in Courage, then they put Jack Kennedy's name on it. And one of his chapters is, of course, about Andrew Johnson being persecuted by the Radical Republicans in Reconstruction. Blah, God they got that wrong.

But last, but not least, Andrew Johnson was impeached and the Radicals kept going after him because A.J. wouldn't quit; he kept provoking them, provoking them, provoking them and provoking them, and not just with words. 

They would appoint a General in one of the five districts in the South, he'd fire him. 

Congress would appoint a whole new series of Freedman's Bureau agents for Texas, he'd fire them. 

You can't run a government like that. 

He would veto the Freedmen's Bureau, they'd override the Freedmen's Bureau and they'd put the budget in place, and he'd say, "Just go and try to enforce it." Now what do you do with a president, if you're running the Congress and you're trying to put a policy in place? 

But at the heart here was a struggle between a group of politicians capable of serious corruption in their own way, but nevertheless who were actually trying to defeat White Supremacy. 

They were actually really trying to create some kind of black civil and political rights in the South. Sure, they wanted those blacks to be Republican voters; what else is new? 

But Andrew Johnson stood fast against them at every turn to try to preserve his own particular vision of White Supremacy. 

Note just one passage. In his State of the Union Message, December 1867 — this is after three attempts; three investigations of him have already been done by the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee has brought possible impeachment articles to a vote and yet voted it down because they didn't quite have any smoking guns yet. And what does he do in his State of the Union, December 1867, among other things? 

He says: "In the progress of nations," — I quote — "Negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. Wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism." 
And it got worse from there.

Stephens, Sumner, Wade and the host of the Republicans in Congress kept hearing this over and over and over, and finally they went after him. The House finally voted in February 1868, by a vote of about 140 to 50-something, to impeach him.

The trouble was they actually — they wrote eleven articles of impeachment but in essence the first nine were all about the technical violation of two laws that Congress had passed that ultimately will be, and should have been, declared unconstitutional. 

They are called the Tenure of Office Act and the Command of the Army Act. 

The Tenure of Office Act was a law passed in essence saying the President of the United States could not fire members of his own cabinet [laughs]. 

The Commander of the Army, the Act said, the President of the United States as Commander-in-Chief, cannot issue orders to the armies without passing those orders through the General of the Army; which was the nineteenth century version of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

They were literally trying to strip constitutional powers away from — not the presidency — but from Andrew Johnson. He violated the Tenure of Office Act, he violated the Command of the Army Act, he willfully did it, and that's the grounds on which they actually impeached him and put him on trial.

Now, in the end he was acquitted, not just because of skullduggery, corruption, and payments; not entirely because of that at all. He was acquitted, in part, because it was the spring of 1868. The Republican Party was about to hold its nominating convention for the 1868 election, and they were about to nominate, everybody knew it, if they could just convince him to do it, Ulysses Grant as the next presidential candidate. 

Grant had been Johnson's General of the Army and Johnson kept embarrassing Grant, over and over and over, until Grant resigned. 

And the Republicans were suddenly frightened politically in the spring of 1868, if they really removed Johnson and put Ben Wade in the presidency and just literally took over the government, that it might really hurt them at the polls, in the fall. And that Democratic Party was doing everything under the sun, including using the Ku Klux Klan to a tremendous extent, as we'll see in the next two weeks, to revive itself and oppose the Republicans in election after election; and will they ever in that '68 election.

In the spring of '68 good old A.J. promised better behavior too. He said he'd cool it, he'd back off, he'd get out of the way, and he would never run again; which wasn't quite true. He was acquitted, he served out his term. He went home to East Tennessee and did as old Andy Johnson always had, he got back on the stump and he got himself re-elected to the U.S. Senate. He will die in 1875. 

He's buried in Greenville, Tennessee, to this day, and we're told he was buried with a copy of the Constitution on his chest, held down by his hands.

He used to say he stood on the Constitution; he's buried with the Constitution I guess standing on him. 

Goodbye Andrew Johnson, it's been so good to know you.

Chapter 4. The Election of Grant in 1868 and the Advent of the Ku Klux Klan [00:27:50]

Now, that fall the American people had a pivotal presidential election. I know we say that about all great elections, but let me give you the quick and dirty, on 1868. Foner covers this nicely. Grant was a war hero, of course. He was going to be now the candidate of harmony. We've had a lot of generals in our history run for president as candidates of harmony. When informed of his nomination, which was only a few weeks after the acquittal trial, in the Senate, of Andrew Johnson, when informed on May 20, 1868 of his — excuse me, in early June, 1868 of his nomination, he issued a public statement which read: "I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the will of the people." And I'm going to repeat that, you tell me what it means. "I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the will of the people." I will not take a stand, he said, in effect. He didn't exactly mean that, but the slogan — and he ended that statement with the famous slogan that would become the slogan of his election campaign, "Let us have peace." This splendidly ambiguous slogan, "Let us have peace." And God knows the whole country's yearning for peace, but what they would have in 1868 is by far the most racist, white supremacist election in American history, and by far, to that date, the most violent. Grant had committed to congressional control of Reconstruction and to the Reconstruction Acts. But the party platform in '68 now retrenched into being a political persuasion of order and stability and no longer of revolution and experiment. They would now be protectors of the status quo they had created, rather than the innovators and the experimenters.

They were now pilloried by their opponents, the Democrats, as radicals, as amalgamationists, as miscegenationists. Black suffrage, the right to vote for black men became the issue of the 1868 election. If you think the Democratic Party in the 1960s under LBJ, which passes the '64 and '65 Civil Rights Act, put itself on a course of near destruction in the South because of its liberal racial views — which it did — the Republicans of 1868 are now running as the party of the black man's right to vote. Now they did say that they were going to leave the right to vote to the whims of the states, in the North, but in the South, in that Reconstruction Act, and by swallowing the Fourteenth Amendment, the black man's right to vote was supposed to be sacrosanct. The Democratic Party had its convention in July of '68. It nominated Horatio Seymour of New York, its former governor. Now Seymour had, among other things — the Democrat's candidate for president — the vice-presidential candidate gets worse — but the Democrat's presidential candidate in '68, Seymour, had openly supported the draft rioters in 1863 in New York City, who were out slaughtering people in the streets. He was on record for having opposed the Civil War, for having been a Peace Democrat, a McClellan supporter, a man who would've sued for peace with the South, and he chose as his running mate Francis "Frank" Blair, for vice-president, from Missouri, who was not only an open white supremacist, but he declared that the Democrats would, if elected, announce the Reconstruction Acts null and void, they would repeal them, and they would return the South as immediately as possible to home rule. In other words, if the Democrats were elected in '68 they would crush the Reconstruction plans. And Blair, in his blustery ways, even threatened a second civil war; a little stupid there.

There were rhetoric and reality in '68, but what was at stake in '68 were the results of the Civil War. It was a memory-laden peace that was at stake. The Democrats wanted to take the Constitution backward. The New York Herald, a Democratic paper, asked, quote, "Was it the Constitution as it was or the Constitution as it is?" That's Andrew Johnson's slogan. Now I want to just give you an example or two of just how racist this campaign was in 1868. There were bloody shirts waving everywhere. "Your people killed my people." "The blood on your hands is the blood of my son." There were Southern bloody shirts, Northern bloody shirts, Democratic Party bloody shirts, Republican Party bloody shirts, and African-American bloody shirts; symbolically, and in some cases literally, people would hold them up. Here's Blair, the vice-president, the attack dog, on the campaign trail. Republicans had oppressed the South, claimed Blair in one speech, by subjecting it to the rule of a, quote, "semi-barbarous race of blacks who are polygamist and destined to subject white women to their unbridled lust." "Let White Men Rule America," screamed a headline in a Louisville newspaper, arguing that Republicans preferred, quote, "native negroes to native whites." And everywhere Democrats labeled the Republican Party as the party of, quote, "the amalgamation of the races, the monstrous negro equality doctrine," and on and on it went. A Georgia Democrat, who got himself elected to the U.S. Senate, named Benjamin Hill, said the South was now under the rule of a foreign power, driven by hate and determined to dishonor an unarmed people. And in language understood across, you might say, all the white class lines in the South, he announced that if the Radicals controlled Reconstruction, southern whites would become America's new slaves. They were, said Benjamin Hill, quote, "becoming the new negroes." And on and on it went.

Now, the Republicans gave it back, not quite in kind, but they certainly waved their bloody shirts. Here's Wendell Phillips, the old abolitionist in Boston, who said, quote, in this election, "We have just finished a war between two ideas. We sent our armies into South Carolina to carry our ideas. If we had no right to carry our ideas, we had no right to send our armies. If the Democrats" — no, he said, "If Seymour wins this election it is as if Lee triumphs at Appomattox." And that makes it pretty clear. Or take this example of a kind of a black bloody shirt. This is Benjamin Tanner, the editor of The Christian Recorder, the largest circulation black newspaper in the United States. It was the weekly newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. And he put it into a kind of little parable. And he says what's at stake in the '68 election — this is very gendered of course — when you think about the power and significance of black male suffrage you know exactly what he's aiming at. He says Negro manhood is what is at stake in '68. Here's the way he put it. "Negro manhood says 'I am an American citizen.' Modern Democracy," meaning the Democratic Party, "says 'you are not.' Negro manhood says 'I demand all my rights, civil and political.' Modern Democracy says 'you have no rights, except what I choose to give you.' Negro manhood says 'I must build churches for myself and schoolhouses for my children.' Modern Democracy says 'if you do, I will burn them down.' Negro manhood says 'I will exercise the rights vouchsafed.' Modern Democracy says 'if you do I will mob and murder you.'" Now, you think our political campaigns get ugly. God, we are so tame, compared to this. As someone once said, politics, it's just war by other means, and there's never a time when that is more true than 1868.

The Ku Klux Klan came into its own in 1868. I'm going to lecture in full about violence and the Klan come next Thursday and next week. But 1868 was their first real coming out. There was a reign of terror in five or six southern states in this election, especially in Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee. All across the South, in '67 and especially that election year of '68, as blacks are beginning to evolve into this process of tenant farming and sharecropping, and trying somehow to eke out livings, they went to the polls in extraordinary numbers and risked their lives, and many of them died doing it. There were all kinds of auxiliaries of the Democratic Party that really were the Ku Klux Klan or its imitators. There were more than 200 political murders in the State of Arkansas alone, in this election. The death toll in Georgia was lower, but intimidation at the polls was very effective. In twenty-two Georgia counties, with a total of 9,300 black men listed on the voting rolls, Grant tallied only eighty-seven votes.

Student: Professor Blight, the students of Civil War have suffered long enough. Let my people go!

Professor David Blight: You're free to leave. [Laughter] Nice hair. I hope he doesn't have a gun. [Laughter] At least he could've sung the lyric. Seriously, has that guy left? And the suffering continues. [Laughter] In Louisiana, more than 1000 people died in political violence, in this one election year, almost all of them black, all between April and November 1868. In Louisiana, twenty-one parishes that had previously had a Republican vote in 1867, totaling some 28,000 black voters, only 501 black votes got cast. And these are just some examples of how intimidation worked. Grant carried all of the North in '68, except three states, if you count Oregon as a northern state. The only northern states that Seymour and the Democrats carried were New Jersey and New York. Seymour won three border states, Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky, and he won only two of the nine reconstructed, ex-Confederate states — eight, excuse me — that were already readmitted by 1868. Grant won in the electoral college 214 to 80.

The important thing is — two things — the Republicans sustained in the fall elections of 1868 a clear veto-proof Congress; two-thirds in the House and four-fifths in the Senate. And without the approximately half million African-American men who voted for Grant in those ex-Confederate states, Grant would never have been elected. It was the first time in American history when the black vote mattered, it counted; and so many of them voted in the face of threats to their lives. Now, on the ground in the South, in the midst of all this politics and violence, which we'll hear more about in time, a new level of — did he say suffering? — went in place. There was a speech made by a former Confederate General at the American Cotton Planters Association meeting in late 1865; December '65 to be exact. And at that meeting — ironically it isn't exactly clear what he intended — but at this meeting the former Confederate General, whose name was Robert Richardson, said, quote, "The emancipated slaves own nothing because nothing but freedom has been given to them."

They own nothing because nothing but freedom was given to them. In the absence of slavery what did the freedmen — now think with me — what did the freedmen actually own? They owned their bodies and they owned their labor. The freed people, as a mass of people, at the end of the Civil War now — the jubilee has come but what do they actually have? They lacked physical capital — money, land, to some extent tools — and they lacked to a certain degree human capital, which means education, literacy, and certain kinds of skills. Now a lot of slaves came out of slavery, of course, with enormous skills. Blacks' economic freedom though, like their political freedom, was largely at the mercy of the regime of white society, or of white supremacy itself, however it would survive. And the primary goal of white Southerners, from day one of Reconstruction, all the way through, was to try to sustain what they most needed, what whites most needed, which was a landless, dependent, agricultural labor force that would stay put. They wanted black people to remain, if not slaves in status, landless, dependent and stationary, as agricultural workers.

Put another way, American freedom for American slaves brought no freedom dues. If you learned about indentured servitude in the past, in the eighteenth century, in all the colonies there were always something called freedom dues. When an indenture ended, a former indentured servant got a suit of clothing, a piece of cash, and usually a piece of land. It didn't happen. There were attempts at this; we'll see more about this in the coming two weeks. There was the Freedmen's Bureau efforts to redistribute land, to some extent. There was Thaddeus Stephens' bill in 1867 which would've — it didn't pass — but it would've called for forty acres and fifty dollars; there was no mention of a mule — forty acres and fifty dollars be given to each freedmen family by the federal government across the South; forty acres. It actually is sometimes referred to as the first reparations bill; didn't pass. There was Frederick Douglass's idea, a little bit later, of a national freedmen's loan agency, a federal loan agency subsidized by the federal government, by taxpayer money, to which freedmen would apply for loans, perhaps three-year loans, five-year loans, low interest loans, to buy land. It's the simplest idea in banking. Didn't happen. What did happen was a fourth effort that became known as the Freedmen's Bank. The Freedmen's Bank was chartered in late 1865. It lasted eight, nine years. It died in 1874 with obligations to approximately 61,000 depositors, all former slaves, or virtually all former slaves, and the bank died on Frederick Douglass's watch as its president, because it could not make good on its payments. It was a good idea, that really wasn't tried. The Freedmen's Bank, by the way, did have some Congressional support, it did have some federal subsidies, but never enough to make a go or make it work. Today we bail out Bear Stearns. In 1874, the federal government and the politics of 1874, as we'll see, just let the Freedmen's Bank die.

Chapter 5. The Second Reconstruction's Impact on Freed Slaves and Conclusion [00:47:40]

Now, let me leave you with this. I have I think a minute or so. We've learned a great deal, I think, from the First and the Second Reconstructions in American history — if we can refer to the Civil Rights Movement as the Second Reconstruction — we've learned a great deal about how political liberty can be achieved: the right to vote, right to hold office, serve on a jury, engage in the political culture, in spite of the hostility and the violence and intimidation. We've learned a great deal about what can be achieved with political liberty, but we've also learned a lot about what is often not achieved in any kind of concomitant economic power. What happens now in the South is a rapid process from slave labor to a whole new set of economic arrangements in the contract realm. What blacks most wanted to get away from, to kill off if they could, was any old system of gang labor. They wanted control over the labor and lives of their women. They wanted out of gang labor. They wanted plots of land of their own. But they faced essentially these three great obstacles. And I'll leave you with this. One is that they had inherited almost nothing from slavery with which to buy land. Two, they lived in an almost non-existent credit market. Long-term loans were simply not available anywhere; and show me a farmer anywhere, in a capitalist economy, who can survive without his bank loans. And three, they face an enormously hostile regime of white supremacy that does not believe black people should have economic independence.

And initially what we see happening is that tenant farming, and then working on halves, or thirds and then halves, and working in a sharecropping system, becomes a compromise. It becomes a compromise because paying wages to former slaves doesn't work in an economy that is so cash poor. There's no cash to pay anybody with. So blacks actually begin to embrace this idea of being a tenant farmer, because you get your own plot of land, you have some control over your own labor, you plant your seeds, you own your own tools, or you think you do. At the end of the crop season you're going to share half of that crop with the owner of the land and then with the furnishing merchant, this new institution that evolves. But you get to keep half, and you can at least hope that in that half comes something like cash that you can keep. What it really is going to become, however, for most, not all, is a dead end, to some extent a dead end kind of debt peonage. What we do know is this: over the next twenty to thirty years, by about 1890 and certainly by 1900, about fifteen to percent percent of American freedmen, and their sons and daughters, will own their own land. It means about eight percent to eight-five percent did not. I'll leave you there; and suffer on.

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