Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Saturday, June 3, 2017
ANDREW JOHNSON AND DONALD TRUMP
There are two strong parallels between Andrew Johnson 's firing of Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, and FBI Director James Comey's firing by Donald Trump. Johnson was nearly impeached and Trump is well on his way. There are other strong parallels as well between these two Presidents, one following Lincoln's post -Civil War assassination, the other following the nation's first black President. Both events engendered trauma in whites.
RECONSTRUCTION DECONSTRUCTION
It is astonishing to learn that in the summer of 1865, the voting rights and property rights of the former Confederate States of America's Rebel-traitors were restored to them by Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, following Abraham Lincoln's assassination, well before any such equivalent voting or property rights were first formally bestowed upon the former black United States of America's veterans, by the much later 13th through 15th Amendments by law!
In short, Andrew Johnson 's pardon and "Reconstruction" of Southern Rebels signaled, burnt, established loyal Union blacks' deconstruction!
These two simple facts mirror the degrading depth of ingrained white prejudice and inveterate ingratitude harbored by a majority of citizens' utter contempt for its black national saviors, who got no share of spoils!All spoils went to 'victorious' losers!
http://www.crf-usa.org/i…/impeachment-of-andrew-johnson.html
Although Andrew Johnson missed being impeached by one vote in the Senate in 1868, for having fired Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War under Lincoln, who supported the "Radical Republicans'" leader, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Johnson 's 1865 veto of a bill granting land rights and civil rights to the blacks in 1865, was never overturned! Here greatest damage was done! Rebels had voting and property, while black had none!
In letters 98-100, Edwin S. Redkey in his great book, A GRAND ARMY OF BLACK MEN (1993) publishes letters to the "Christian Recorder" and to the "Weekly Anglo-African" newspapers by USCT soldiers who express frustrations about the honors being denied to them, and the "black codes" still confronting them in summer 1865, p.223-227.