I remember sometime around the 2020 election, there was quite a bit of talk comparing the 2020 election to the 1860 election, implying of course that this was somehow a replay of the days before the Civil War. While history does have a fat back beat, it doesn’t truly repeat itself. If it did, the gambling industry would be churning through bets on exactly when the next past event would predictably cycle through again, and again in the following cycle of events. But while the discussion was going on regarding 1860 vs. 2020, I at least entertained the idea of what if we were not heading into the next Civil War, but the next Reconstruction. What if the first Trump presidency was the nation-splitting event, and the early 2020s was the nation’s attempt to move forward on complex social issues? Would the nation succeed into a progressive movement? Or would it somehow falter like the Reconstruction era did?

Roughly 160 years after it occurred, discussions on Reconstruction have essentially been watered down to a) President Andrew Johnson didn’t really want Reconstruction as he was appeasing his Southern ties, and b) any hope of Reconstruction working was forever dashed by a back room deal by Republicans to make Rutherford B. Hayes president following the contested 1876 election. While those elements are part of the Reconstruction story, there is a whole lot more involved. And like any other historical era, it’s extremely complicated. Yet there are lessons to be learned as the event won’t happen again in a precisely-timed cyclical fashion, but there are signs that the nation is once again going through these types of motions. The question now is does the nation follow a similar path post-1877, or is it better than that… or worse?

Eric Foner’s 600-plus page analysis published in 1988 manages to reset the conversation to a more historically accurate recounting of the nation from 1863-1877. Foner does an excellent job of telling the story of Reconstruction without falling into the trap of hindsight, which is easy for a historian to do. With attention to detail as well as context from the times, he leads with the facts of The Emancipation Proclamation as the starting agent of Reconstruction. As the focus of the war shifts from reconnecting the Union to Union + the end of slavery, Foner works through the timeline of Presidential Reconstruction under Johnson as the Southern economic and social order was turned on its head, Republican Reconstruction after Johnson’s efforts failed, a stretch of near egalitarianism between the races in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and the intense blowback from Southern Democrats helped in part by increasingly feckless Northerners (of all parties) which resulted in a reversal of fortunes in the mid 1870s. 

By 1872, the Democrats started winning back offices both locally and nationally while crafting “The Lost Cause” narrative. The Panic of 1873 set in, caused in large part by investors and municipalities cashing in on the new business of the national railroad. With the overstretched financial commitments to the railroad causing economic pain across the nation, doubts were being sown on how important Reconstruction really was. It led to a Democratic wave in 1874, and the contested 1876 presidential election between the lackluster Hayes and the rich and powerful governor of New York, Samuel TIlden. During this crescendo to the nation’s centennial, outright theft at the ballot box occurred in precincts for local and national elections through opaque laws and intimidation. Local lawmakers openly defied laws and court orders, even staging state-level insurrections. And an unofficial police force called the Ku Klux wreaked havoc throughout the south. Oh, don’t forget to mix in several incredibly audacious decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the center of all of this, was the white hot fire of unadulterated male white supremacy.

It’s important when looking back at Reconstruction, and looking at the challenges of the nation since and especially today, to acknowledge the part that male white supremacy plays in our nation’s history. It’s not a popular topic to openly discuss in many quarters, and in certain political establishments, but to stick one’s fingers in the ears and scream, “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!” doesn’t make the truth go away. The same can be said for the erasing of election laws, oppressing public education particularly at the university level, or systematically removing people and their history from the military if they are Black, Hispanic, female, or queer. The common ingredient that allowed slavery to be legal for much of our nation in the 18th and 19th centuries, and caused a massive blowback to progress for Blacks, women, and immigrants during and immediately after Reconstruction, and why we currently have nationalized troops “liberating” Los Angeles and soon other major metropolitan cities is the same thing-- the white hot fire of unadulterated male white supremacy. Acknowledging its past effects, and what that white hot fire is doing today, is key to not only understanding our nation’s past but the challenges we face today and in the future.

Consider today, starting with the chaos of the nation in 2020-- a nation locked indoors by the COVID pandemic, sharply divided by a contested election (although in reality the results weren’t close), and a nation generally tired of four years of Donald Trump. Change was made via the ballot box, and while Democrats made great strides in 2021-22 to move the nation forward, the party just couldn’t find it within itself to maintain that progress. This was caused by the curious resistance of members of congress like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, an aging and too comfortable leadership corp at the DNC, as well as a general squishiness by party leaders to assume everything bad was in the rearview mirror. Quite the contrary, as a lack of immediate consequences for the January 6th insurrection allowed the new “Lost Cause” to be communicated the moment Kevin McCarthy kissed the ring at Mar-a-Lago just days after the Joe Biden presidency began. The original “Lost Cause” was spread by yellow journalism in penny newspapers, while the new version quickly went around the world on the internet.

The white hot fire of male white supremacy, which had been blazing once again since the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012 (after all, even the white supremacists could chalk up the 2008 win as a fluke), was on full blast as militias of unloved white men grabbed their guns and practiced a little “pew pew” in the rural regions of the nation. Inflation skyrocketed in 2022, and despite coming down with a strong labor market in 2023-24, many Americans were seeing a different reality as they found it hard to pay the bills. This wasn’t the antebellum planter class losing its workforce and economic structure, but it was a vast majority of voters feeling like they had lost the economic and class war. Clearly change had to happen, or so they believed, and change was the previous president who miraculously avoided prison in four scandals during his time out of office. Disastrous Supreme Court decision whittled down individual rights, and the new administration even put Reconstruction’s 14th amendment in the crosshairs, which Foner presciently noted even in the 1870s it was causing problems with interpretation thanks to the lawmakers’ vague language when writing the law.

And there’s still the unseen consequences of today’s activities and decisions, that could easily make you feel in 1870-something all over again. The Ku Klux have traded in their white robes and horses for ID-free tactical gear and pickup trucks. “ICE” sounds so much cooler, literally and figuratively, than “KKK” does. One has to wonder if crypto, the housing crisis, or more likely the burning of billions of dollars in cash all in the name of the AI race will soon be the equivalent of overextension on railroad investments that causes a giant financial crash. There’s certainly no shortage of robber barons, a new gilded age, when looking at billionaire tech bros now and comparing them to titans of industry then. And of course, at the center of it all, is the white hot fire of unadulterated male white supremacy.

Reading Foner’s book helps clarify a lot of the Reconstruction events, and the causal effects of seemingly smaller events at that time, in why Reconstruction ultimately didn’t work. There were structural flaws, and personnel flaws, but in the end a lot of white Americans north and south just weren’t up to the opportunity. Much like people today have memory-holed a lot of what has happened in this country over the past 15-20 years, it’s easy to see how by the mid 1870s enough people shrugged their shoulders and decided a facsimile of the previous status quo (oppression, but without the awkwardness of slavery!) was just fine with them. It took about 90 years for the country to again offer equal rights through the law to Blacks, women, and other minority groups. It’s been about 60 years since that era, and it doesn’t take much to see how the pendulum could be swinging back towards another long stretch of 60+ years with reduced rights and restricted freedom to all Americans. As you read the book, you become enriched with the history of the past, but you shake your head reading too much tied to the present and the future.

Although this is an older book, and a bit of a read at 600 pages, it is a must-read for Americans today. As I mentioned it not only helps reset what really happened during Reconstruction, it helps paint part of the picture of today. It’s not a mere repeating of history, but it is a warning sign and a reminder that a series of seemingly unconnected events and people can alter the course of history for the worse despite the best of intentions at first.