Coming Soon: Bombshell article by Robert Kagan explains in detail the current threat to our democracy -- why it matters, and some suggested actions to prevent the toppling of our democracy.
URGENT
More later.
(Source: Washington Post, Sunday, September 26, 2021, Section A)
The Great Strike of 1877 brought out the worst of the new American system. This new duopoly was the alliance between the federal government and the Republican Party. And this Republican Party had became the party of big business in relatively quick order.
As strikes of aggrieved workers spread across the country and persisted, the Hayes administration was besieged with anxious requests from governors, towns, and business interests to protect factories and railroads from the strikers, both violent and non-violent. President Hayes responded by sending in the army with few strings attached. This allowed authorities to side with business owners against the workers, and after many battles -- pitched and otherwise -- to quash the workers' movement, if only temporarily.
Thus, we see that along with suppression of the American Natives, every-day hard-working Americans were also confronted with armed encampments of federals. Gone was the army effort to protect Negro rights. In its place was a new order: a unified Federal government and capitalist front determined to destroy workers' rights.
We live with this legacy yet today.
Eric Foner in his book, Reconstruction, summarizes the elevation of Hayes to the Presidency after a protracted political and legal battle. To summarize Foner in turn, the gifted author places the installation of Hayes as more the end of a process starving the Reconstruction effort, rather than the beginning of it. Then there was the fairly rapid turn away from the needs of Freedmen (former slaves) to other efforts, such as the extirpation of the Nez Perce in the West. And in this effort, Hayes was more than complicit in that he was the Guiding Chief of the Army which pursued them.
Thus, after the election of Hayes, the blacks became for all intents and purposes a forgotten race for one hundred years.
to be continued
Briefly --
PART 1
For those who may not know, Reconstruction was the period in the U.S. following the Civil War during which the federal government attempted to assist the South in rebuilding its society and economy.
I have just been reading about the Tilden-Hayes controversy in the Presidential election of 1876, by Eric Foner. This is the most complete account I have read so far. The story is complicated in its techanical aspects, but the out-come was that Hayes would be President and Reconstruction would largely come to an end.
I'll have more to say about how this affects my view of President Hayes later.
