Heather Cox Richardson (Penguin Books, 2023, 2024)
This is the second book I read by Richardson. She is a historian for whom I have a lot of respect. Her daily newsletter is a must read for anyone interested in digging deep into current events and placing those events in a historical context. I am upset whenever I miss any of her posts. I am one of about one million of her followers, and she serves them all well. So what follows may seem anomalous. I have enjoyed and learned from reading both of her books, but remain somewhat disappointed with certain aspects of them.
A few years back, I read How the South Won the Civil War. There are consistent threads that run through both books. Generally I had mixed feelings about her 2020 book, and have mixed feelings about Democracy Awakening, mostly regarding her use of what appear to be sweeping generalizations. I suppose these generalizations are meant to view history from a certain perspective, by following a thread that can be traced to form a kind of predictive pattern. The pattern I think she sees is one of slow, erratic, but steady progress.
As examples of these generalities, in her 2020 book she states “In 1860…Americans set out to reclaim the government from an oligarchy and rededicate it to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Really? Americans committed to equality for all? Even Lincoln believed, not only that Blacks were inferior to Whites, but that the two groups could not co-exist, prompting him throughout much of his political career to advocate for re-settlement of Black slaves to Africa or Central America. Even the motivation behind the Emancipation Proclamation was probably as much, if not more, about getting slaves to abandon plantations (the lifeblood of the Confederate supply chain) and seek the protection of the Union army, as it was about abolition itself. The Civil War was fought over the institution of slavery, not only in the South, but in the nation’s expansion West. To say the country in 1860 was committed to giving renewed life to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence is a bit of a stretch. Lincoln did win the 1860 election, but he won with only 40% of the popular vote. Stephen A. Douglas, who ran on a platform of States’ Rights (leaving decisions about the issue of slavery, not only in the South but also in the Western territories, to the Whites who could vote) ran a relatively close second with 30%. On balance, 60% of the country voted for candidates who either were pro-slavery or accepting of slavery to preserve the Union or defer to States’ rights. This makes it difficult to conclude that Americans, by and large, believed that all men were created equal.
Likewise, in her current book, she makes similar generalizations. As useful and instructive as her history lessons are in her daily newsletter, I find her tendency to generalize has the potential to diminish a needed appreciation for the complex nature of our history. It is tempting to draw a straight line from the progressive era to the New Deal through subsequent administrations until the Nixon years. But tempting as it is, it may not do justice to our history. To say that Eisenhower took up the cause of the liberal consensus is not far from the truth, but there should be qualifications. It is true that Eisenhower saw the compact between capital and labor as a given, but when it came to racial politics he was in favor of a slow, incremental approach. To follow the phrase, “he took up the cause,” with the sentence referring to Eisenhower’s appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is beyond misleading. In fact, Eisenhower once remarked that the appointment of that “dumb son-of-a-bitch Earl Warren” was the biggest mistake of his presidency. To say that the Spanish American War was fought because Americans were concerned about the plight of Cubans yearning for independence is to gloss over other motivations for the war. There were also commercial and imperialistic interests and aspirations at stake. It was on account of the Spanish American War that the United States came to be recognized as a global power.
In characterizing the late 19th Century, Richardson tends to focus on the Democratic Party leading the nation towards a liberal consensus. But it would have been more convincing to discuss the complexities of the Democratic Party during this period. In many ways, urban Democrats were, at best, ambivalent about slavery, and at worst, against abolition, which would potentially have created increased competition for jobs. So, to say, “Democrats’ focus turned away from the racial animosity of the South to the northern cities, especially New York City…” seems a bit over-simplified. There was definitely a start of a progressive trend and I agree that New York City and other northern cities became laboratories for future government intervention. But racial animus was still rampant. The New York City Draft riots, where over 100 Blacks were lynched and a Black orphanage was burned to the ground (luckily the 223 children in residence were able to escape), was not even a distant memory towards the end of the century. Southern Democrats remained a force in the South. It is true that the KKK lost much of its power, but racial violence heightened toward the end of the century, as Jim Crow held a stranglehold on race relations and Southern men were exhorted to see every Black man as a threat to their honor, and to take every opportunity to violently repress Black progress. Southern Democrats did not turn their attention towards the political potential of urban America. They found new ways to replicate the old Southern regime of exploitation and oppression.
Between 1865 and 1868 over one thousand Blacks were lynched in Texas. That amounts to almost five lynchings a week. The Great Compromise of 1876, when Hayes was given the Presidency in return for agreement to remove federal troops from the South and end Reconstruction, resulted in Black Codes, convict leasing (“neo-slavery”) and Jim Crow. In 1884, in Calhoun County, Georgia, Lillie and Emma Mike, ages 9 and 11, were lynched and burned alive because their father Calvin Mike attempted to vote. Voter suppression in the South was so rampant that from 1867 to 1892 Black voter registration went from about 67% to less than 6%. Fifty years later, it dropped to about 4%, in spite of the fact that many counties in the state were majority Black.
In 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina, a massacre and government coup was carried out by White supremacists. Two Thousand Whites, many of them veterans of the Spanish American War, overthrew the legally elected Fusionist, biracial government, expelled opposition black and white political leaders, and destroyed black owned property and businesses. Some estimates put the number killed at 300. This was a violent rejection of post-Reconstruction reconciliation. Over two thousand Blacks left Wilmington voluntarily, never to return. Due to this, the city overnight went from a Black majority to a White majority city. As with many such events, the incident was initially reported around the country as a race riot initiated by Blacks.
These are just a few of the many examples of Democratic racial animosity. And it would be a mistake to assume that this was a Southern problem alone. Violence was a staple in most Northern cities when Blacks attempted to integrate. Chicago was one of about 25 cities that erupted in race riots in the Red (as in blood) Summer of 1919. Over a period of 13 days state militia let violence play out, resulting in 38 deaths (23 Blacks and 15 Whites), serious injuries to hundreds and homelessness for about a thousand Black families. Jump forward to 1951, in a western suburb of Chicago, where a race riot occurred when 4,000 Whites attacked an apartment building where one Black family had recently been rented a unit. Fearing for their lives, the Clark family left before nightfall, when rioters broke into the building and over the course of five days set fire to the building and destroyed all the family’s belongings.
The late 19th and early 20th Century was a period of violent repression and to dismiss the racism of Northern and Southern Democrats and the power they wielded risks giving the wrong impression. Not to be overly critical, Richardson is not unaware and does make reference to the atrocities and injustices that occurred throughout the period, but she seemed to want to portray a picture of the United States as a country on a steady (if inconsistent) path, embodied in the famous quote from MLK, Jr., “the arc of history bends towards justice.” There is a case to be made that there was real progress accomplished through the New Deal, but that progress may have only found fertile soil due to an economic depression that seriously threatened the very foundation of our so-called “Liberal Democracy, “ or capitalism.
Following that arc of history, much is made of how the Johnson Administration succeeded in putting a capstone on the accomplishments of the New Deal. I agree entirely with this assessment, especially since the progress made in this period made up for the racial discrimination and exclusions of the New Deal. But it is important to recognize that just as the thirties threatened our prevailing systems and processes, the sixties, as a period of upheaval, was also seen as a threat to “our way of life.” As is obvious now (with Trump in office for the second time), a majority of Americans cannot be said to have been in favor or the civil right victories of the 1960s. It would be more accurate to say a majority or very substantial minority of Americans simply retreated into private life due to the upheavals of the time – hippies, campus unrest, drugs, Black Liberation, feminist agitation, gay rights, urban riots, right to choose, right to life, assassinations, war protests, sexual freedom and other cultural phenomena that appeared to rock the very foundation of the country.
Unfortunately, this book was completed just before the elections of 2024. I may be inferring too much, but I believe Richardson believed Harris would prevail. [So did I.] Much in the book is made of Biden’s Administration turning back fascism and returning to our country’s path of liberalism. But Trump won, and one could make the argument that the arc of history, after periods of progress, always reverts back to injustice, elitism and inequality.
I think it is fair to say that Richardson is an optimist, even with the burden of knowledge she bears as a historian. Besides benefitting from reading this book, which presents much of our history in concise, meaningful and understandable ways, optimism is something we could use right now. So I will end with a quote from her book which embodies optimism, based upon struggles that few of us can imagine as a part of our own lives: “In an era of pervasive and violent repression, people who were legally excluded from equality kept the idea of American Democracy alive for everyone. They also suggested a way forward.” These are powerful words to keep in mind as we struggle with the dismantling of our republic. The only word of that quote I would change is “idea.” I would replace it with “ideal,” which is where all progress must begin.