Violence, Deceit Identify Trump, Similar Pattern To 150 Years Ago
Ex-president trump riled up his supporters with a constant drumbeat of lies that he was robbed of reelection in 2020, always with an undercurrent of racism.
His campaign of deceit led trump’s minions to gather at the Capitol on Jan. 6, where they heard trump’s call to arms to violently attack the national seat of government. As the carnage unfolded, Trump stood silent, refusing to call off his jackals while people died and the capitol was defaced. The mob included various seditious groups, including the Proud Boys who trump told to “stand back, stand by.” It was reminiscent of his comments after a white supremacist, neo-Nazi rally in Virginia when trump said there was “blame on both sides.”
And when the deadly smoke of insurrection lifted, trump was exonerated after a second impeachment. And on the final days of his rule, trump granted amnesty to many of the very people with whom he conspired to overthrow the government. Trump clung to his lies and bellowed to his supporters that he was a persecuted victim of his vile, Democratic political enemies. Trump refused to acknowledge defeat and did not attend the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
Now trump is trying to return to office, hoping once again his keen speaking abilities and political sense will carry him back to the White House. Look back 156 years and find another disgraced president who fomented discord and sparked violence and rose from the ashes to become a U.S. Senator.
Andrew Johnson had been named the 17th president of the United States after the assassination of President Lincoln. On this day in 1866, Johnson stood silent as whites attacked African Americans in southern cities. Johnson was later impeached and he too was exonerated. And he too claimed innocence and blamed a conspiracy by his political enemies. Johnson also refused to attend the inauguration of his successor, President Ulysses S. Grant.
Just as trump denied or simply ignored congress, Johnson took advantage of the first eight months of his term and while congress was in recession, he pushed through Reconstruction policies, and issued pardons and amnesty to any rebels who would take an oath of allegiance. As a result, many former Confederates were elected to office in Southern states and pushed for harsh so-called “Black codes,” which essentially maintained slavery. Johnson eventually approved 18,000 pardons, including Confederate officials of the highest rank, such as Alexander Stephens, who had served as vice president under Jefferson Davis.
It was in May 1866, a year after President Lincoln was assassinated and Vice President Johnson found himself leading the nation. Johnson, a racist southerner from Tennessee wanted to limit reconstruction in the south, and wanted to readmit the former Confederate states to the Union even if they took no steps to guarantee rights to former slaves. After his impeachment. Johnson did not budge and told his supporters that he too, was a victim of his political enemies.
The white populations in the southern states saw their way of life threatened by the possible emancipation of enslaved people. Their anger boiled over into civil war. Today, many white Americans, led by trump, adhere to the so-called “replacement” theory, that Democrats are trying to drown the nation in a sea of people of color, overpowering the white population.
Johnson supported the new leaders of southern states, all vehemently racist, who believed the president gave them a green light to develop the Black Codes to keep Blacks from voting or otherwise getting involved in political life.
The Black Codes were partly responsible for the so-called New Orleans Massacre on July 30, 1866. Black and white delegates had attended the Louisiana Constitutional Convention at the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans, called because the Louisiana state legislature had recently passed the black codes and refused to extend voting rights to black men. White anger was further fueled when a month earlier, four years of martial law imposed by the Union Army ended and Mayor John T. Monroe, an active supporter of the Confederacy, was reinstated as acting mayor.
A delegation of 130 black New Orleans residents marched toward the Mechanics Institute when they were met by a mob of ex-Confederates, white supremacists and New Orleans police officers, coordinated by Mayor Monroe. Shots were fired but the group proceeded to the meeting hall where they were attacked and beaten. The police and mob surrounded the institute starting shooting indiscriminately. Some of the black delegates surrenders and were killed on the spot. African Americans were shot on the street or pulled off of streetcars to be beaten or killed. By the end of the massacre, at least 200 black Union war veterans were killed, including 40 delegates at the convention. Altogether 238 people were killed and 46 were wounded.
Johnson’s grants of of southern leaders led former Confederate leaders to regain their former seats of power in local and national governments. One of them was Harry T. Hayes, a celebrated confederate war veteran who was later named sheriff of Orleans Parish and played a prominent role in the 1866 New Orleans Riot, at one time deputizing nearly 200 of his former soldiers who were now members/beneficiaries of the “Hays Brigade Relief Society.”
Johnson stood by silently.
An 1867 congressional investigation determined that the New Orleans massacre would never have happened without Johnson’s tacit approval of the violence and the growth of Black Codes.
A similar level of racial violence occurred at the so-called Memphis massacre of May 1 to 3, 1866. White policemen and black veterans recently mustered out of the Union Army, got involved in a shooting altercation. It led to mobs of white residents and policemen who rampaged through black neighborhoods and the houses of freedmen, attacking and killing black soldiers and civilians and committing many acts of robbery and arson.
The carnage included 46 black and two white people dead, 75 black people injured, more than 100 black persons robbed and five black women raped. A total of 91 homes were burned along with four churches and all eight of the black churches and schools were burned in the black community. Modern estimates place property losses at over $100,000, suffered mostly by black people.
Attorney General James Speed declined to act and ruled that judicial actions associated with the riots fell under state jurisdiction. State and local officials refused to take action.
The Black Codes, sometimes called Black Laws, were laws limiting the freedom and governing the conduct of free and emancipated African Americans.
Black codes existed before the Civil War both in the south and the northern states of Connecticut, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and New York. The laws were designed to discourage free blacks from moving to the northern states. The formerly enslaved people were denied equal political rights, including the right to vote, the right to attend public schools, and the right to equal treatment under the law.
The southern states, unlike the north, codified the various black codes into laws controlling everyday practice. African Americans were restricted from voting, bearing arms, gathering in groups for worship, and learning to read and write. The most damaging feature of the Black Codes was a broad vagrancy law, which allowed authorities to arrest freed people for minor infractions and commit them to involuntary labor.
In Illinois, the harshest Black Code prohibited any Black persons from outside of the state from staying in the state for more than 10 days, subjecting Black people who violated the rule to arrest, detention, a $50 fine, or deportation. The system created incentives to arrest African Americans and to lease them out to work with little or no wages, the so-called convict lease system, also known as “slavery by another name.”
Lincoln accepted the system of Black Codes as a step on the path to gradual emancipation. After the war ended, the U.S. Army implemented Black Codes to regulate the behavior of black people in general society.
Johnson’s sympathies with southern states and his reluctance to protect African Americans led to a loss of support of Congress and the public. He decided that in response to the opposition, he would challenge the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from firing high officials without congressional consent. He claimed the act was a direct violation of his constitutional authority and in August 1867, he fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who opposed Johnson’s stance on rights for African Americans after the war. In February 1868, the House voted to impeach Johnson for violation of the Tenure of Office Act, and for bringing disgrace and ridicule on Congress. He was tried in the Senate and acquitted by one vote. He remained president, but both his credibility and effectiveness were destroyed.
After leaving the White House, Johnson took advantage of his renowned oratory skills and went on the speaking circuit. In 1874, he won election to the U.S. Senate for a second time.