"In practice, you know we [men] are the subjects [of] the despotism of the petticoat" (John Adams, 1776): A Beloved 1860 Lincoln Story Turns Out to Be a Damning Indictment of Women's Participation in Elections

Has it ever occurred to you that one of the stories about Abraham Lincoln most revered for cuteness turns out, actually, to be a fairly damning indictment of women participation in politics not to mention of the nineteenth amendment?

In the wake of the numerous victories by socialists, Glenn Reynolds quotes Kyle Smith ("Don't underestimate the value of looks. El-Sayed won in part because he's good-looking. Mamdani won in large part because he's cute.") and links to the far more damning assessment of The Patriarch Tree:

The Party of College Educated White Folks Craving Swarthy Foreign Guys — it’s not really about health care policy or “affordability” or whatever. @TheDemocrats are now a BDSM cult organized around some kind of weird masochistic Mandingo fetish.

Let us go through the history of one country, the United States, and see to what extent women have suffered under the of oppression of men and their "toxic" hyper masculinity — along with how men have neglected the wisdom of females.

Notice that there are two facets to the issue here: A) that far from being excluded from society — at least political society — women certainly had their voice to share; and B) their propensity for choosing a good candidate for a good reason is highly to be desired.

What follows is a couple of stories — one of them famous — in which many would say the tendency to vote for looks (even over half a century before women has the vote) turned out to be rather positive. Still, there is a problem when looks seem to be the only value one species is looking for.

In his book about "Danish blood in the American Civil War", To War for Lincoln (I Krig for Lincoln: Dansk Blod i den Amerikanske Borgerkrig), Anders Bo Rasmussen quotes some of the letters written by a Danish-American chief quartermaster after the Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern).

In Arkansas one finds "the most beautiful women" one has ever seen, wrote Captain Ferdinand Winsløw during his unit's occupation of Batesville.  He said that he and several Northern officers managed to "convert several sessesh ladies" to the Union cause, thanks less to their weapons than to their "good looks."

Voters converting to Lincoln or to the Union cause? Because of what? Because one or several of them is/are (more) handsome? Again, a good thing in this particular case (at least in my eyes) — but hardly what you want in a voter.

Let's take America's most famous president, and concentrate on two aspects — from 1860 and from 1858. Although the story of a little girl writing to Abraham Lincoln asking him to grow a beard is well-known (probably less so in today's school system), the content of the letter is clearly overlooked, as is its significance — which turns out to be: nothing less than astounding. 

What does it say for women's oppression versus men's allegedly ignoring of the females in their lives when an 11-year-old Grace Bedell can write the following letter?

I will try and get the [all four of my brothers] to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.

The wives and the daughters can, and do, "tease" their husbands and their brothers to vote for their preferred candidate (and that only on the basis of their looks)?!  Whether it is the women themselves voting or their menfolk following their instructions, what does that say for about their participation in the electoral process, not to mention about the independence of men along with the latters' alleged oppression of the female sex?!  Although in this case, the result of the optics turned out to be rather positive — with the victory of Abe Lincoln — one can hardly deny that it still puts a huge question mark on women's participation in elections and politics.

A couple of years earlier, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates (attended by entire families, i.e., with both men and women present along with their children), the pro-Railsplitter banner at one of the rallies read 

Westward the star of empire takes its way — 
the girls link-on to Lincoln, their mothers were for Clay

The Republican procession into Charleston, Illinois, for the 4th debate on September 18, 1858, was lead by a band, followed by a carriage carrying Old Abe, followed immediately after by 32 girls (one for each state) in a "mammoth car" draped in white silk and muslin, bedecked with wildflowers, and emblazoned with the Lincoln enscription above ("Westward thy star of Empire takes its way" is the way another report had it, "thy Girls Link-on for Lincoln / Their Mothers were for Clay"), followed in turn by a maiden on horseback with a sign "Kansas — I will be free" along with an endless line of teams "filled with men, women, and children" extending behind them "across the prairie as far as the eye could reach" in a cloud of dust.

What possible reason could there have been to use a sign (not to mention the 32 young girls) underlining which candidates were favored by a significant number of American women, of all ages, in the current generation as in the previous generation, were for, if it wasn't the fact that their opinion had (a lot of) significant value?
 
Let us go further back (almost four score and seven years earlier), to the American Revolution:  One letter written during the Spring of 1776 as the Constitutional Convention prepared to cut all ties with Britain is often taught to schoolchildren in shortened form: Abigail Adams's admonition from Massachusetts to her husband in Philadelphia to "Remember the Ladies." 

In her letter written three months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the wife of John Adams writes that

"in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. … That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute."

What is much more rarely taught to schoolchildren is the reaction of John Adams, and no wonder, since it turns out to be… a bout of hilarity:

"I cannot but laugh … Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems. Although they are in full force, you know they are little more than theory. We dare not exert our power in its full latitude. We are obliged to go fair and softly, and, in practice, you know we are the subjects. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat"

"In practice, you know we are the subjects"!

Doesn't that sound like a far cry from the women as oppressed class, not liberated until, at the very earliest, the 19th amendment in 1920?!

No wonder that Sarah Hoyt writes that

THE US IS THE FIRST MATRIARCHY TO CLAIM THAT WOMEN NEED LIBERATION

As for Sigmund Freud (of all people), during his 1909 (and only) visit to the United States, the father of psychoanalysis complained that American women “lead the men around by the nose, make fools of them, and the result is a matriarchy … In Europe, things are different. Men take the lead. That is as it should be.”

In any case, if we are to listen to a great deal of Americans of the 19th century as well as of the 18th century (female as well as male), then it seems that the whole women/wives-victims-of-the-evil-men/husbands is not only highly overblown but is in most cases close to 180º false. And — to say the least — their capacity for judgment in voting can only be described, at least much of the time, as: highly dubious.

Again, John Adams: "… in practice, you know we are the subjects [;] repeal[ing] our masculine systems […] would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat."

Update: In The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself, Janice Anne Fiamengo writes in the foreword (free on Amazon and on Substack's Fiamengo File, thanks to ADJ) that

Feminism poses a threat to everything good in western culture, perhaps especially to women’s capacity to love, reason, and exercise self-restraint.

I was an adherent of feminism before I became a critic. 

 … Unlike others who have criticized feminism’s excesses, I contend that although there are some moderate feminists, there was never a moderate feminism inspired by reasonable goals and untainted by anti-male fanaticism. Feminism did not go wrong at some point in history, whether after the Second Wave or before, whether in anti-sex or pro-sex zeal. It was always rooted in resentment and envy, warped by utopian longings and false notions of female moral superiority.

Decades of feminist grievance-mongering and accusation have led inevitably to our present time of ceaseless complaints, anti-western causes, hysterical accusation, rampant divorce, a declining birthrate, millions of abortions, and anti-male cruelty. Feminism has undermined and will continue to undermine the stability and viability of all western societies. 

True, there are many varieties of feminism, not all of them agreeing on every point: … Such distinctions do not concern me because none makes a real difference.

None escapes the victim mentality: the belief that the history of humanity up until the present moment has been a history of (privileged, white) men oppressing women and other innocent victims; and that because of their alleged greater suffering and moral innocence, particular care and attention must be paid to women and to their unique capacity for empathy and social justice.

No version of feminism escapes the binary logic whereby the world is divided up into (sometimes intricate, overlapping) categories of oppressor and oppressed, victim and victimizer, to be treated differently and valued differently according to their identity category.

Because it thinks in terms of groups and divides the world into innocent and guilty, feminism is incapable of devising universal principles or pursuing individual fairness or freedom. It is distorted by its victim thinking, incapable of extending empathy to those feminists see as oppressors, and incapable of demanding accountability from those feminists see as victims.

 … The notion that men have always had a good time and women always suffered as a result of men’s actions is of long standing. Perhaps it is even embedded in female psychology as part of an ancient survival mechanism. Also baked into our cultural fabric is the tendency of women to sympathize more with other women than with men; and of men to sympathize more with women than with other men.

These natural proclivities on the part of both men and women provided fertile ground in which feminist ideas about blame and innocence could take strong root, stirring up women’s anger and resentment, provoking men to self-doubt and shame.

Beginning in the eighteenth century in the west, women spoke and wrote vehemently about how their men had betrayed them, and men turned against their fellow men in disgust, anxious to show that they were not a party to the betrayal. 

In the nineteenth century and even more strongly in the twentieth, men were easily persuaded to support laws and programs to benefit women even when those programs disadvantaged men. The history of affirmative action tells of decades during which white men have accepted overt, unjust discrimination almost without a murmur.

Even today, over a century after women achieved full legal equality with men and half a century after the implementation of affirmative action hiring programs as well as ceaseless female empowerment campaigns, many women are still angry and many men are still trying to make amends. 

It must be stopped. … It’s unlikely that non-feminist women alone will be able to defeat their crazy feminist sisters. This will have to be a joint venture between men and women, firm in its resolve, clear-eyed about the stakes, unshaken by public shaming or self-doubt.

Isn't It Time to Gut the 26th Amendment? (The Marxist Undertones of "Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote" Exposed)

With the news that Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic primary thanks to college towns, it seems far from inappropriate to once more raise the question: isn't it time to gut the 26th amendment?

Indeed, isn't it time to gut most of the amendments of the 20th century? (With the notable exception of those proposed before the year 1900?)

The news that the Democratic Socialists want to abolish the Senate, the presidency, the electoral college, and much more, turns out to be nothing new. Back in October 2016, almost 10 years ago, when Barack Obama was still in the Oval Office while Hillary Clinton was favored to win the White House, I asked:  

Don't the Main Respected Institutions Gutted by the Left Turn Out to Be the IRS, the FBI, the State Department, and the White House?

A famed Iowahawk meme has been, all to accurately, used to describe every kind of institution, from the Smithsonian and the NFL to, most notoriously, college campuses around the country:

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect. 

Of course, what is the most venerable institution of all? Isn't it the United States government — most notably the IRS, the FBI, and the State Department, as well as the White House itself?

David Burge's meme is the story of Barack "fundamentally transform the United States" Obama and the Obama administration, and David Burge's meme will be the story of the Hillary Clinton administration.

What can we expect regarding the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House of Representatives under a Hillary administration, as well as "the miracle at Philadelphia" — the Constitution itself?!

Turning America, one step at a time, into a banana republic. (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)

For this, you can thank in great part the 26th Amendment.

In reply to "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," the reasonable reply ought to have been the French proverb, "si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait" ("If youth had the knowledge, if old age had the energy", i.e., Youth is wasted on the young).

To the Yahoo Answers question, "What is meant by 'youth is wasted on the young'?", the "Best Answer" reads in part:

It means that young people have everything going for them physically; they're in the best health they will ever be in; their minds are sharp and clear BUT they lack patience, understanding and wisdom which results in so much wasted effort.

In other words, Youth has the muscle, so it fights, it goes to war.

Adulthood has the wisdom, so it votes, it takes care of the laws.

Before you are tempted to protest, let's add to the previous sentence: Adulthood has the wisdom, so it votes, it takes care of the laws; including the laws concerning the beings for whom they have the deepest love in this life — their very own sons.

Think of this: don't the reasons given for the Amendment XXVI turn out to be some of the most extreme-leftist arguments ever raised?

Indeed, what is the main assumption behind "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote"?

That a boy's (or a girl's) father, and a boy's mother, are clueless clods, incapable of reflecting beyond their own self-interest, thinking of nobody but themselves, far too clueless not to vote in favor of what would be the best for their son (or daughter), especially in what concerns matters of life and death; no, for that, you need to go somewhere else.

And what would that somewhere else one should go to be? The… government, of course, and its politicians (those white knights in shining armor come to rescue a hapless citizenry, in this case the young), which has/have so effectively taken over the roles of family (as well as religion) — Big Brother — all over the Western world.

… young people … lack patience, understanding and wisdom which results in so much wasted effort

Another reasonable reply to "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote" would be (Churchill's?) famed saying:

If, at 20, you don't lean to the left, you have no heart;
If, at 30, you don't lean to the right, you have no brains.

You have no choice but to wonder whether the United States is where it is at — institutions identified, killed, and gutted, with respect demanded (not to mention "5 Make the carcass apologize") — because it has, out of a sense of "justice" and "fairness", enacted amendment after amendment during the 20th century, most of which have undermined the Republic while building Democracy, thereby enabling the era of the Drama Queen.

You have no choice but to wonder whether the entire Western world is where it is at because it has allowed election after election to be decided by millions of immature voters lacking "patience, understanding and wisdom which results in so much wasted effort"; election after election to be decided by millions of immature voters with plenty of passion ("this is not who we are") but with no brains.

No brains at all…

Related: Dear 16-Year-Olds, Dear High School Pupils, Dear University Students: Do You Have Any Brains?!

At this point, the reader may ask: And what should the Twenty-Sixth Amendment be replaced with? For starters, turn the rules back to the states. Beyond that, as I wrote for a Danish newspaper in November 2022,

Here is a new and better proposal: Change the law, so people don't get the vote until they reach about 25; unless they get a job at a younger age (including — naturally — serving in the military) and until they have paid their first tax bill.  

To repeat what I wrote on this blog earlier in 2016:

Never would I have thought that the Republican Party, and the United States of America, was ready to commit suicide — certainly not in my lifetime…

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia … could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

— Abraham Lincoln

"Break Their Spirit" with "Maximum Warfare": What Nobody Tells You About Reconstruction in the South After the American Civil War

As the nation reacts to the "disgustingly violent" call by Hakeem Jeffries for "maximum warfare" against members of the GOP (and, more specifically, of Donald Trump's MAGA movement) and for Dems to "break their spirit", I think back to last summer.

One of the things that I did during last year's summer months (during which this blog was, for unexplained reasons, banned for 112 days) was read Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses Simpson Grant. (This proved an unexpected boon, as reading about Grant's travails and hardships proved to be somewhat therapeutic for me; This year, I am reading his Pulitzer Prize-winner, Washington — A Life.) I knew a lot about the Civil War; but what occurred during Reconstruction was eye-opening, to say the least.

The present post will detail the era of Reconstruction. But prior to that, if you will allow me, I will quote the single most significant single passage in the entire book, which deals with the battles of the Civil War. First of all, we have his closest ally during the war comparing his friend's military sense with that of the top general of the Confederacy:

Perhaps the person who best explained Grant's strategic superiority was Sherman, who stated that while Lee attacked the front porch, Grant would attack the kitchen and bedroom.  In his earthy way, Sherman expressed the view that Grant engaged in total warfare that eroded enemy supply lines and infrastructure, while Lee remained highly focused on the battle at hand, without a long-term strategy for the war.

But the single most important quote of the 900-page book concerns 

shattering … the mystique of rebel soldiers.  The South, Grant noted, had demonstrated dash and pluck at the outset of battle, but his own men had exhibited the true staying power.  Reflecting on this after the war, he said, "I used to find that the first day, or the first period of a battle, was most successful to the South, but if we held on to the second or third day, we were sure to beat them, and we always did." 

This is astounding. Truly astounding.  Grant is suggesting, basically, regarding all the Union generals who preceded him — those who have generally been called incompetent — that if they had only persisted instead of panicking and immediately retreating, there is a good chance that they would have ended up winning their battles in the end. Precisely like Grant himself did after initial setbacks, most famously at Shiloh.

• Sherman, as night settled over the field at Shiloh at the end of the first day of fighting: 
"Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" 

Grant: "Yes. Lick'em tomorrow, though."

 

• Earlier that day, upon asked by an officer whether the Union Army should make preparations for a retreat from Pittsburgh Landing, Grant replied:  "Retreat? No! I propose to attack at daylight and whip them."

Now back to the second part of Ron Chernow's Grant, and his dealings with the South's Democrats during his presidency. 

Of course I had been aware of the basic tenets of Reconstruction, but I hardly realized to what a devastating as well as an illuminating extent the Democrat Party of yore reflected the Democrat Party of today. (See my post on how I personally take notes when reading a book, which you may possibly find inspiring…) 

As Catherine Salgado writes, regarding How the Civil War Changed but Didn't End,

The Union was finally abolishing slavery once and for all … But the Civil War did not end at Appomattox Court House, nor even at Bennett Place, scene of the last major surrender of the war on April 26. In fact, it arguably never ended. Democrats simply shifted from firing cannons and rifles on a battlefield to weaponizing courts, laws, the press, and riots. 

 

One of the most misleading claims in modern politics is, “This is not the Democrat Party of your grandfathers.” It is — and of your great-great-great-grandfathers.  

 

 … In the 1800s as much as in the 2000s, the Democrat Party utilized politically-fueled domestic terrorism, election fraud, character assassination, extreme rhetoric, race-baiting, and emotionally manipulative propaganda. 

 

 … From the Red Shirts and the KKK to Antifa and the anti-ICE rioters, from John C. Calhoun to Joe Biden, from Jim Crow to sanctuary policies and CRT, there is a continuum of Democrat lies, tyranny, racism, and violence. In the 19th century, Democrats justified the Fort Pillow massacre and the KKK assassination of Rep. James Hinds (R-Ark.), and in the 21st century, they justify a 1,347% increase in assaults against ICE and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. 

Catherine Salgado's words were echoed, 70 and 25 years earlier, by the deep thoughts of Harry Jaffa on American history. From Harry Jaffa's book A New Birth of Freedom, we learn that far from defending States' Rights or any kind of rights — as many conservatives (North as well as South) enamored with the rebel spirit seem to think is warranted — such Southern Democrats as John C. Calhoun were rather dabbling in Socialism and Marxism before Marxism had even become a common household word. As I have written, regarding The Greatest Myth in U.S. History, Yes, the Civil War Era Did Feature Champions of States' Rights, But No, They Were Not in the South (Au Contraire: they were in the North). Harry Jaffa:

 … if ever there was a nation annihilated politically on the battlefield that nonetheless imposed the yoke of its thought upon its conquerors, it was the Confederacy 

 … The echo of Calhoun in the [nihilistic] words of [one of the modern era's chief justices] is evidence that the Confederacy is alive and well and that the Union victory at Appomatox [sic] has not been accompanied by any ascendancy of the words of the principles of the Gettysburg Address

 … we will see in Calhoun the generation of the most powerful forces that today dominate the intellectual life, not only of the United States, but also of the Western world generally

 … The idea of progress led Hegel, Marx, and Calhoun radically to depreciate the role of reason in all their predecessors, whether statesmen or philosophers

 …  one might call Calhoun the founding father of "interest group liberalism" in twentieth-century American political science.  Calhoun's theoretical writings are a landmark in the transition from individual rights to group rights as the ground of constitutionalism and the rule of law …  More than anyone else, Rousseau is Calhoun's intellectual progenitor 

Indeed, the Trump administration's fight against pervasive fraud, vote-rigging, gun control, double standards in law courts, and Democratic demonization of its opponents (of whatever race), resembles nothing more than the Democrat Party — although far less violent (so far?) — in the 1870s, 1860s, and 1850s. This has been touched on numerous times on this blog over the past 22 years.

Related History Posts:
• What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?
• During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder? (Wait 'til You Hear About… Georgia's Dark Secret)
• Abraham Lincoln and the Founding Fathers' Supposed Embrace of Slavery Along with Their Alleged Rejection of Women's Rights 
• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"
• The Greatest Myth in U.S. History: Yes, the Civil War Era Did Feature Champions of States' Rights, But No, They Were Not in the South (Au Contraire)
• Harry Jaffa on the Civil War Era: For Democrats of the 21st Century as of the 19th, "the emancipation from morality was/is itself seen as moral progress"
• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About Scandinavia's — Dreadful — 19th-C Slavery Conditions?
• A Century and Half of Apartheid Policies: From Its 1828 Foundation, the Democrat Party Has Never Shed Its Racist Past
• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History
• How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Why They Don't Tell You the Whole Truth: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence 

 
And here we get to the meat of this post, the part of Ron Chernow's biography of Grant dealing with the Reconstruction years:

In describing the Klan's tight grip over the region, Grant summoned his most emphatic language, saying its purpose was "by force and terror … to deprive colored citizens of the right to bear arms [!!] and the right to a free ballot, to suppress schools in which colored children were taught, and to reduce the colored people to a condition closely akin to that of slavery."

 … In countering the Klan, Grant found himself back in familiar territory, operating as general in chief.  Whenever he returned to war-related issues, Grant showed a sure grasp of both his values and methods.  He knew that the Klan threatened to unravel everything he and Lincoln and Union soldiers had accomplished at great cost in blood and treasure.

 …  [Horace] Greeley was famous for his withering slurs against Democrats, having once said that while not all Democrats were horse thieves, all horse thieves were Democrats. He had denounced them as "traitors, slave-whippers, drunkards and lecherous beasts."

 … "If the Devil himself were at the helm of the ship of state," the abolitionist and woman's rights activist Lydia Maria Child responded, "my conscience would not allow me to aid in removing him to make room for the Democratic party."  She believed that when Liberal Republicans endorsed "state sovereignty," it meant "when the Ku Klux renew their plans to exterminate Republicans, white and black, they shall be dealt with by Southern civil authority — that is, by judges and jurors who are themselves members of the Ku Klux association"

 … No Southern state presented more insurmountable problems to Grant than Louisiana, which had become a hotbed of hatred and corruption.

 … the worst slaughter perpetrated against blacks during Reconstruction.  Staggered by [the 1872] cold-blooded massacre, Grant told the Senate "a butchery of citizens was committed at Colfax, which in bloodthirstiness and barbarity is hardly surpassed by any acts of savage warfare."

The Colfax murderers thus walked off scot-free, sending a powerful message to white supremacists that they could slay blacks without any penalty. …   such unalloyed sadism

 … As Grant attempted to normalize federal relations with former Confederate states, he struggled with a newly emergent white supremacist groups, hydra-headed offshoots of the Klan with names such as the White League, "rifle clubs." Red Shirts, and Knights of the White Camelia.  They tiptoed around prosecution by claiming to be county militia.  Unlike the Klan, which was a secret paramilitary group … Harper's Weekly wasn't far from the mark when it termed the White League "an unmasked Ku Klux"

 … The battle [in New Orleans] had witnessed an extraordinary event:  James Longstreet now fired on men he had commanded during the war, his small army having killed twenty-one White Leaguers

 … To Grant, it looked as if the country might be lurching toward a second Civil War 

 … Many saw the Louisiana violence as the opening shot of a second Civil War and a revitalized Confederacy, albeit clothed in a new form.  Discussing the mood in New Orleans, Sheridan told Orville Babcock, "I have so often heard expressions that the new rebellion was to be fought under the stars & stripes and in the north as well as the South — that the mistake made in 1861 was to have had their own flag."

 … Grant's personal tragedy was simultaneously an American tragedy. Grant predicted to John Roy Lynch that the northern retreat from Reconstruction would lead to Democrats recapturing power in the South as well as "future mischief of a very serious nature … It requires no prophet to foresee that the national government will soon be at a great disadvantage and that the results of the war of the rebellion will have been in a large measure lost …"

This wasn't a minor statement:  the victorious Union general of the Civil War was saying that terror tactics perpetrated by southern whites had nullified the outcome of the rebellion.  All those hundreds of thousands dead, the millions maimed and wounded, the mourning of widows and orphans — all that suffering, all that tumult, on some level, had been for naught.  Slavery had been abolished, but it had been replaced by a caste-ridden form of second-class citizenship for southern blacks, and that counted as a national shame.  

The Little-Known Story Of The Colfax Massacre, The Worst Episode Of Racial Violence During Reconstruction, happens to be discussed on the All That's Interesting website:

After the 1872 gubernatorial election in Louisiana, KKK members and former Confederates stormed a courthouse occupied by Black militiamen — and killed as many as 150 of them.

The clash took place in the small town of Colfax, Louisiana. A white mob of Democrats that lost the election tried to seize control of a courthouse defended by Black Republicans. And the election dispute quickly turned into a massacre.

 … What triggered the violent race massacre? And how did the Colfax Massacre help end Reconstruction and tip the balance toward segregation and Jim Crow rule?

 … One Southern paper laid the blame at the feet of the “scalawags and carpetbaggers,” common terms for southern and northern Republicans who supported Reconstruction. 

Here are some extended notes from Ron Chernow's biography of General Grant, which repeats all the main quotes featured above, in addition to a number of other quotes of interest:

 … Before long, Grant's stonehearted faith would be severely tested as the new president [Andrew Johnson] went from being too harsh toward Confederate leaders to being too obliging   

In Part Three,  "A Life of Peace", Grant is elected to the White House

As the charitable victor at Appomattox, Grant stood as the foremost symbol of a merciful attitude towards the defeated states.  At the same time, as the leading Union general, fully committed to the war's agenda of preserving the Union and ending slavery, Grant was no less associated with protecting the four million freed people.  How to reconcile these two often incompatible impulses as they clashed in post-war America would define the rest of Grant's life and would prove, in many ways, as baffling a problem as winning the war

 …In Andrew Johnson, Grant would had to deal with a new president who would swing from excessive hostility toward the South to excessive leniency, alienating at both ends of the spectrum … As Grant put it, "As soon as the slave-holders put their thumb upon him [Johnson] … he became their slave."

 … Most consequential for Grant's historic reputation was the way southerners of the Lost Cause school would begin to idealize Lee

 … Grant came to believe that Lee, far from accepting the war's outcome gracefully, was secretly hostile to it and abetted southern fantasies that their defeated cause would rise anew

Mosby repaid [Grant's] surprising kindness be becoming a steadfast friend and ally of Grant

 … There was so much skulduggery between France and the rebels during the Civil War that Grant classified Napoleon III as "an active part of the rebellion"  

 … a new form of bondage, establishing the foundations of the Jim Crow system that later ruled southern race relations

 … "Liberty has been won," contended Senator Charles Sumner.  "The battle for equality is still pending."  Unless freed blacks received the vote, warned Frederick Douglass, "we should have slavery back again, in spirit if not in form"

 … For all their excessive zeal militant Republicans would produce some of the most powerful legislation in American history to accord equal rights to African Americans

 … [Regarding the] so-called carpetbaggers … In southern mythology, they would be demonized as corrupt parasites, but many were motivated by idealism and paid a steep price for their courage.  Southern whites who supported Reconstruction, called "scalawags," faced similar antipathy

 … The sadism [in New Orleans in 1866] was … wanton [and] a chilling display of racial hatred

This violence seemed a grotesque continuation of the Civil War by other means, and one member of the white rabble went so far as to brag, "We have fought for four years these god-damned Yankees and sons of bitches in the field, and now we will fight them in the city."

 … black and white Republicans were being murdered with abandon in southern states

 … Gruffly dismissed … as mere "rumors of Negro murders," [allegedly] unworthy of serious consideration … [this] would become a standard Democratic defense in future years

Doesn't this sound like how Democrats and the MSM have characterized election fraud in the past few decades?

 … In many parts of Texas, Grant asserted, a Union man wasn't safe outside the umbrella of federal military protection

 … for southern blacks and white Republicans the First Reconstruction Act promised sorely needed protection against the indiscriminate white terror directed at them with alarming frequency

… [Between] the Second Reconstruction Act [and] the Third Reconstruction Act, [Ron Chernow mentions the] Ku Klux Klan, its arcane name derived from the Greek word kuklos, for band or circle 

… Never before in American history had there been such racially integrated governmental meetings, and they pioneered in establishing public schools and contesting discrimination

 … More than 80 percent of black delegates were literate, but the handful of illiterates provided endless fodder for vicious satire in the white press, creating an enduring caricature of Reconstruction as a period of misrule by inept black politicians.

 … Nothing alarmed white southerners more than the specter of blacks casting votes.  The united power of blacks, carpetbaggers, and scalawags produced a stunning string of Republican election victories in fall 1867 across a region long solidly democratic

 … [The slogan of Grant's 1868 presidential campaign was] "Let us have peace" … Henry Adams wisecracked that "Let Us Have Peace" meant only "Leave Me Alone" 

 … Grant, having never set eyes on the Great Plains, wanted his son Buck to see them  whilst still occupied … "the Buffalo and the Indian, both rapidly disappearing now."

Grant rhapsodied about the beauty of the American West, only regretting the "three epidemics" that had plagued it:  the pistol, the bowie knife, and whiskey

 [There were] troubling sign that Grant, in his new political incarnation, might ignore professional advice and prove unwilling to modify his traditional style to accommodate new political realities

 … Democrats ran what the historian David W. Blight has branded "one of the most explicitly racist presidential campaigns in American history."  Grant railed at the "desperate and unscrupulous" tactics of Democrats, but Republicans didn't shy away from invective either

 … Blacks still couldn't vote in many northern states, whereas they could vote in most formerly Confederate states.

 … The campaign's most chilling feature was the huge wave of murder and arson orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan against black and white Republicans in the South

 … speculation about [Grant's] strained relations with Sherman … [their] radically different worldviews

[At this point Grant wins the 1868 election on November 3, "by a comfortable but not overwhelming margin", trouncing Horatio Seymour however in an electoral landslide of 214 to 80.] 

 … Sherman … had monitored Grant's rise with decidedly mixed emotions, believing that "if forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would choose the penitentiary, thank you."

 … the Department of the Interior, a notorious mare's nest of corruption.  It is important to note that corruption was rife in many departments before Grant took office … Grant would prove a far more assertive president than his modest inaugural address had suggested

 … "The chief business of the executive had become the distribution of patronage."  Abraham Lincoln had been besieged by office seekers who cluttered the stairs and corridors day and night.  One day a friend asked Lincoln whether he was depressed because the Union army had suffered a military setback.  He smiled wanly and saud, "No, it isn't the army.  It is the post office in Brownsville, Missouri." 

 … Grant knew that, for every friend he won through an appointment, he earned a hundred enemies in rejected suitors 

 … Elated at this appointment, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise said it showed "that President Grant had revoked General Grant's notorious order No. 11." 

 … As James M. McPherson has pointed out, eleven of the first twelve amendments to the Constitution constrained governmental power; starting with the Thirteenth Amendment, six of the next seven enlarged it.  The war also centralized power, welding states closer together and forging a new sense of nationhood.  As Grant told a relative, "Since the late civil war the feeling of nationality had become stronger than it had ever been before"

 … The mounting wealth also meant the dominant Republican Party was torn between its idealistic, abolitionist past and its business-oriented future

 … In the nineteenth century, Congress was infinitely more powerful than in the twentieth and senators ruled as headstrong barons whose power often rivaled that of presidents   

 … Perhaps more than any other president, Grant oversaw the evolution of Washington from a straggling village into a modern city with well-paved sidewalks, sewers, and water and gas mains

 … Grant showed a a surprisingly keen eye for government architecture … dubbed "General Grant" style … "the dingy, shabby carpets and furniture in this new home"

 … Ben Butler mocked Andrew Johnson as the "drunken tailor" and Grant as the "drunken tanner" … But such random accusations were now more conspicuous by their absence and occurred with nowhere near their frequency of wartime drinking charges

 … Fired by a crusading spirit, [Adelbert A.] Ames saw carpetbaggers as apostles of "northern liberty" who had "a hold on the hearts of the colored people that nothing can destroy"

 … "When I took command of this military district," he recalled, "I found that the negroes who had been declared free by the United States were not free, in fact they were living under a code that made them worse than slaves, and I found that it was necessary, as commanding officer, to protect them, and I did"

 … On a personal level, Grant extended an olive branch to Confederate generals.  In May 1869, Robert E. Lee came to the White House to discuss a railroad venture.  As at Appomattox, Grant attempted to smooth over an awkward situation with a little levity and small talk.  "You and I, General," said Grant, "have had more to do with destroying railroads than building them."  Lee would not be drawn into this sort of pleasantry.

 … Many of the generals who had defeated the Confederacy were now assigned to pacify Native Americans and often betrayed a punitive, bloody attitude, exemplified by Phil Sheridan's infamous remark "The only good Indians I know are dead."

 … Many in Congress had few qualms about pursuing a policy of outright genocide, which one Nevada congressman calling for "extinction.  And I say that with a full sense of the meaning conveyed by that word."

 … This hopeful, idealistic path, paved with good intentions, had been touted by well-meaning presidents from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln

 … Annexing Santo Domingo could also break British domination of the Caribbean, which forced American vessels "to pass through foreign waters."  

"the crime of Ku Kluxism"

 … [Grant] committed fatal errors by pursuing this momentous policy in a closed-door, top-down style that made sense in wartime, but not in politics.  He didn't prepare the American electorate or mobilize public opinion or rally voters to his side.

 … For many southern whites, however, the idea that their erstwhile slaves could now hold office and even gain the upper hand  in their political lives was intolerable.  It reinforced their growing conviction that secession had been, as The Nation phrased it, "not wicked, but holy and glorious."

 … This fateful moment presented Grant with a domestic challenge as daunting as that faced by any American president, or it inspired hope among blacks and smoldering resentment among many whites.

Black gains can be overstated and certainly were by an alarmed white community:  fewer than 20 percent of state political offices in the South were held by blacks at the hight of Reconstruction. Still, those represented spectacular gains for people so recently held in bondage

 … With a violent backlash well under way, the party of Lincoln began to pay a price for being the vocal paladin of African Americans.  

 … Under Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution, slaveholding states had been entitled to count three of every five slaves as part of their electorate in computing their share of congressional delegates,  Now former slaves would serve as full citizens, swelling the electoral tally for southern states.  This was fine as long as freed people exercised their full voting rights,  Instead, over time, the white South would receive extra delegates in Congress and electoral votes in presidential races while stifling black voting power,  "It was unjust to the North," Grant subsequently lamented,  "In giving the South negro suffrage, we have given the old slave-holders forty votes in the electoral college.  They keep those votes, but disenfranchise the negroes.  That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of reconstruction."

 … The new Justice Department would forge its identity in the battle to slay the Ku Klux Klan and such offshoots as the Knights of the White Camelia.  Having disbanded Confederate armies, the North had not stopped the emergence of quasi-military organizations throughout the South.  In describing the Klan's tight grip over the region, Grant summoned his most emphatic language, saying its purpose was "by force and terror … to deprive colored citizens of the right to bear arms [!!!] and the right to a free ballot, to suppress schools in which colored children were taught, and to reduce the colored people to a condition closely akin to that of slavery."

[In the postbellum era, the last word of the KKK often seemed to be dropped, by friend and foe alike, with the organization referred to as "the Ku Klux association," "the Ku Klux businesss," "KuKluxery," "Ku-Klux-Klanism," "traitorism," and "Banditti"]

 … In pursuing the Klan, he showed to advantage his persistence, simplicity, and innate stubbornness.  Through the Justice Department, the federal government would emerge as the undisputed champion of civil liberties in the southern states, carving out a new role

"It seems like we are drifting … back under the leadership of the slave holders," a black Republican moaned.  The southern states had now been readmitted to the Union with full congressional representation, but far from adumbrating a new era of harmony, it signaled the start of a deepening era of polarization.

 … These were ground-breaking decisions that for the first time enabled the federal government instead of state and local governments to punish "private criminal acts"

… these domestic terrorists 

… The man who implemented this bold agenda was [Amos] Akerman, who thought Reconstruction best served the long-term interests of the enlightened South, properly understood.  To those who protested its severity, he responded that nothing was "more idle than to attempt to conciliate by kindness that portion of the Southern people who are still malcontent.  They take all kindness on the part of the government as evidence of timidity."  For Akerman, the Klan's actions "amount to war, and cannot be effectively crushed on any theory."

 … In countering the Klan, Grant found himself back in familiar territory, operating as general in chief.  Whenever he returned to war-related issues, Grant showed a sure grasp of both his values and methods.  He knew that the Klan threatened to unravel everything he and Lincoln and Union soldiers had accomplished at great cost in blood and treasure.

 … By 1872, under Grant's leadership, the Ku Klux Klan had been smashed in the South. (Its later twentieth-century incarnation had no connection to the earlier group other than a common style and ideology.)

 … [Frederick] Douglass marveled at his equal treatment, commenting that "while all the fools are not dead yet, the American people are rapidly outgrowing their slavery-engendered prejudices, and will one day wonder how they could have so long lived under its degrading spell."  Douglass's assignment was yet another example of Grant's appointing African Americans in far greater numbers than any previous president.

 … In a momentous shift, Grant made common cause with party bosses, who increasingly formed the backbone of his support on Capitol Hill

 … Benjamin Moran, secretary of the American legation in London, was stunned by the decline of American support even among Britons who had fervently embraced the Union cause:  "They look upon this [Alabama] claim for consequential damages as dishonest and as confirming the popular English opinion … that we are a tricky people."

 … he learned to to manipulate the levers at his disposal to get things accomplished on Capitol Hill.  After personal betrayals suffered over the Santo Domingo treaty, he decided to reward loyalty above ideology and came to view reformers as two-faced troublemakers while party bosses, however corrupt, at least stuck to their word

 … Grant has suffered from a double standard in the eyes of historians.  When Lincoln employed patronage for political ends, which he did extensively, they have praised him as a master politician; when Grant catered to the same spoilsmen, they have denigrated him as a corrupt opportunist.

 … Part of Grant's need to placate party bosses was that he presided over government in the heyday of senatorial power.  Senators were still elected by state legislatures and business interests

 … [The White House] scandals [were] christened "Grantism" [and the president was] dubbed "Kaiser Grant" … "The people are tired of a man who has not an idea above a horse or a cigar"

 … Greeley was famous for his withering slurs against Democrats, having once said that while not all Democrats were horse thieves, all horse thieves were Democrats. He had denounced them as "traitors, slave-whippers, drunkards and lecherous beasts."

 … the true aim of the new fusion ticket was the "overthrow of Negro supremacy—the anti-Reconstruction agenda, however thinly masked by reform rhetoric
 … "If the Devil himself were at the helm of the ship of state," the abolitionist and woman's rights activist Lydia Maria Child responded, "my conscience would not allow me to aid in removing him to make room for the Democratic party."  She believed that when Liberal Republicans endorsed "state sovereignty," it meant "when the Ku Klux renew their plans to exterminate Republicans, white and black, they shall be dealt with by Southern civil authority — that is, by judges and jurors who are themselves members of the Ku Klux association"

 … "If as a class we are slighted by the Republican party," [Frederick Douglass] noted, "we are as a class murdered by the Democratic party."  He swore he would rather blow his brains out than destroy the Republican Party.

 … Despite his unflagging advocacy for black rights, Grant never forgot the spirit of Appomattox and his desire for harmony between North and South

He continued his relationship with the onetime Confederate partisan John Singleton Mosby, the "Gray Ghost" who had mercilessly harassed his troops in northern Virginia … the two became fast friends during Grant's second term when Mosby turned into a frequent dinner guest at the White House.

… [In 1872] blacks voted Republican in the fairest election in southern states until 1968
 … President-elect Grant rose above the scandal, which predated his administration. But the involvement and the fact that the scandal unfolded on his watch have unfairly linked Grant's name in the history books with a scandal in which he lacked any association

 … He sounded charitable toward Native Americans, advocating "education and civilization" in place of war:  "Wars of extermination … are demoralizing and wicked.  Our superiority of strength, and advances of civilization, should make us lenient towards the Indian."

    35 A Butchery of Citizens 

 … No Southern state presented more insurmountable problems to Grant than Louisiana, which had become a hotbed of hatred and corruption.

 … the worst slaughter perpetrated against blacks during Reconstruction.  Staggered by this cold-blooded massacre, Grant told the Senate "a butchery of citizens was committed at Colfax, which in bloodthirstiness and barbarity is hardly surpassed by any acts of savage warfare."

The Colfax murderers thus walked off scot-free, sending a powerful message to white supremacists that they could slay blacks without any penalty. …   such unalloyed sadism

 … As Grant attempted to normalize federal relations with former Confederate states, he struggled with a newly emergent white supremacist groups, hydra-headed offshoots of the Klan with names such as the White League, "rifle clubs." Red Shirts, and Knights of the White Camelia.  They tiptoed around prosecution by claiming to be county militia.  Unlike the Klan, which was a secret paramilitary group 

 … The battle [in New Orleans] had witnessed an extraordinary event:  James Longstreet now fired on men he had commanded during the war, his small army having killed twenty-one White Leaguers

 … To Grant, it looked as if the country might be lurching toward a second Civil War

    Chapter 36  The Bravest Battle

 … Far from being transitory, the crisis was deep and intractable amd persisted for more than five brutal years.  It would be termed "the Great Depression" until eclipsed by the 1930s downturn

 … He also wanted to revive American shipbuilding, which had been badly damaged during the war.  

Grant expanded this vision by again endorsing a canal to connect the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans and he had surveys conducted to locate the most feasible site.  Quite visionary about the pathway, Grant maintained that "it would add largely to the wealth of the Pacific coast, and, perhaps, change the whole current of the trade of the world."

 … the baffling subject of race relations … White Democrats had demonstrated that without protection of federal troops, they could resurrect the prewar power structure

 … One of Grant's saving graces was his ability to listen
 … Grant had refused to mince words about Democratic injustices in Louisiana
That Julia Grant, erstwhile southern belle, felt so outraged by Democratic misbehavior in Louisiana says something about the militant mood in the Grant household

The president was running out of room to maneuver as the country backed away from further federal interference in the South.  The outcry over Louisiana began to ring down the final curtain on Reconstruction.  Southern whites increasingly substituted the word "Redemption" — a restoration of white rule — for the hated term "Reconstruction"

 … Many saw the Louisiana violence as the opening shot of a second Civil War and a revitalized Confederacy, albeit clothed in a new form.  Discussing the mood in New Orleans, Sheridan told Orville Babcock, "I have so often heard expressions that the new rebellion was to be fought under the stars & stripes and in the north as well as the South — that the mistake made in 1861 was to have had their own flag."

 …One of the last hurrahs of Reconstruction was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, enacted by lame-duck Republicans. It outlawed racial segregation in public accommodations, schools, transportation, and juries.  The law had many flaws in its enforcement provisions, but was revolutionary in its principles of equal treatment for all        

MMMMMMM Here is one more piece of evidence that the true civil rights movement was not in the 1960s, as the left-leaning rewriters of history would have you believe, but a hundred years earlier.

 … Democratic governors never bothered to enforce it

    Chapter 37  Let No Guilty Man Escape

 … Governor Adelbert Ames of Mississippi … His darkly prophetic letter previewed the nearly century-long Jim Crow system that would cast blacks back into a state of involuntary servitude to southern whites

 … Ames saw the election as a referendum on race, pure and simple,  "In one phrase — hostility to the negro as a citizen.  The South cares for no other question.  Everything gives way to it.  They support or oppose men, advocate or denounce policies, flatter or murder, yet no such action will help them as far as possible to recover their old power over the negro."  He scoffed at Grant's hollow promise to send troops as "a sham and the election a fraud."  The election had mocked the U.S. Constitution and guaranteed a prolonged night of terror for freed people.  When a Senate committee investigated the elections, it decided it had been won "by the Democrats by a preconceived plan of riots and assassinations," in the words of Senator George Boutwell.

 … Grant's personal tragedy was simultaneously an American tragedy. Grant predicted to John Roy Lynch that the northern retreat from Reconstruction would lead to Democrats recapturing power in the South as well as "future mischief of a very serious nature … It requires no prophet to foresee that the national government will soon be at a great disadvantage and that the results of the war of the rebellion will have been in a large measure lost … "

This wasn't a minor statement:  the victorious Union general of the Civil War was saying that terror tactics perpetrated by southern whites had nullified the outcome of the rebellion.  All those hundreds of thousands dead, the millions maimed and wounded, the mourning of widows and orphans — all that suffering, all that tumult, on some level, had been for naught.  Slavery had been abolished, but it had been replaced by a caste-ridden form of second-class citizenship for southern blacks, and that counted as a national shame.  

        Chapter 39  Redeemers 

 … "I met Mosby on my way to the President's", Hamilton Fish wrote, "and he told me that the language of the Democrats now was more desperate and more threatening and violent [during the election of 1876] than that of the Southern men on the Election of Lincoln in 1860"

 … With memories of the Civil War still fresh, another bloody clash was far from unthinkable

 … [Rutherford B] Hayes would bring an end to Reconstruction.  It was a pyrrhic victory for the Republicans, who sacrificed their ideals in exchange for perpetuating their rule 

 … Reconstruction was now officially dead and the Democratic Party in charge across the South. "Half of what Grant gained at Appomattox," said Wendell Phillips, "Hayes surrendered for us on the 5th of March" [1877].  Yet many Northerners cheered the change. 

 … Americans today know little about the terrorism that engulfed the South during Grant's presidency.  It has been suppressed by a strange national amnesia.  The Klan's ruthless reign is a dark, buried chapter in American history 

 … Could even Abraham Lincoln have appeased the White South while simultaneously protecting its black population?  It seems unlikely.  Grant saw a double standard at work: the country tolerated terror by whites, but not by blacks. 

 … Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote.  Black sharecroppers would be degraded to the level of debt-ridden serfs, bound to their former slave owners

 … Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln, for what he did for the freed slaves.  He got the big issues right during the presidency, even as he bungled many of the small ones

 … In the words of Frederick Douglass, 
"That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband,  
Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and                          
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen." 

Gerrymandering Wins & Fails Across the USA; + the Hysterical Response in Mudville

In a recent C-SPAN debate involving Glenn Youngkin and Rahm Emmanuel, the Democrat charged that the nationwide gerrymandering mess "all started in Texas," meaning Republicans are the original sinners. Of course 

it did not. (When the former governor of Virginia started to protest, the former mayor of Chicago immediately cut him off.) On the contrary, the Lone Star State's gerrymandering has been in response to massive gerrymandering in Democratic states, notably Illinois, New York, and California, not to mention multiple states in New England, which turns out to be a political monoculture. As Dan Crenshaw responded to Bill Maher (when the Real Time host claimed that "Republicans are winning the gerrymander war"): "Democrats have been winning this battle for a looong time."

Indeed, what is even worse in my eyes, or at least just as bad — and this is yet another news item that emerged in the Trump years that floored me and that the MSM should have revealed years ago — a dozen states have something akin to 60-40 D-R voting patterns, but do not get a single Republican lawmaker in Congress.  

"Republican voters make up 40% of New England. Democrats control the district lines."  

In addition, as a recent meme puts it, "The Democrats welcomed 20 million illegals into America in order to change the census for voting"… And it's the Republicans who are accused of gerrymandering?!?!

Isn't that evidence, MSM — whose members are always repeating Democrats' denials of election fraud being anything serious enough to warrant investigation — of some form of cheating in American elections?! Duncan Hill writes: 

My state, Connecticut, has about the same proportion Dem to Republican. Yet, we have no, zero, zip, nadda Republican representation in Washington. Hmmmm...how can that be? 

Duncan is responding to our old friend Damian Bennett, — aka the man who notes that with the Left "it's always Trump 24/7/365¼" — uncovers many of the shady dealings that have characterized the Old Dominion's smoke and mirrors, which started with 

Abigail Spanberger promising to be a moderate whose agenda placed focus [only] on living costs and public service, i.e., applying only to economics and "affordability." 

By the way, Gavin Newsom, the South became the Confederate States (or attempted to do so) precisely because it was one single Democrat stronghold, one which sputtered with outrage when a Republican had had the gall to win the race to the White House in 1860. 

If you don't have the time to read his entire plate of hyperlinks, then scroll all the way to the bottom, because Damian's basic reaction on the gerrymandering news front is his very final word at the bottom of this post. His in-depth work starts below the X video:

The gerrymandering debate always skips one inconvenient fact: Democrats dominated the redistricting game for decades and created wildly disproportionate representation in plenty of states.

California sends only a handful of Republicans to Congress. Illinois has a massive… pic.twitter.com/Zweyiu1Cvt

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) May 12, 2026

Damian Bennett:

A Democrat ballot initiative seeks to redistrict purpley Virginia from 6D/5R to 10D/1R. This would reduce the 48% state red vote to 9% representation in the House.

Q: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily [!?] adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness [!?] in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes [!?] for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?

□ YES 

□ NO

Interlude: 

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:

The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play. ...

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

 (Apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer)

We resume with some pre-gloats, the vote soap, the post-gloats, and the gloat reach-arounds:

• Hakeem Jeffries: Only Republicans Are Initiating ‘Partisan Gerrymandering’ October 26, 2025
• L. Louise Lucas (Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore (D)) On X October 29, 2025: Thinking of some new plates for my Hummer… 

• L. Louise Lucas On X January 16, 2026: I have the utmost respect for Senator Kaine and Senator Warner but we do not need "coaching" on redistricting coming from a cuck chair [!?] in the corner. How about you all stay focused on the fascist in the White House and let us handle redistricting in Virginia. 10-1
• Virginia Democrat Gives Profanity-laced Response To Cruz's Criticism Of [Virginia]'s Redistricting Push February 7, 2026
  L. Louise Lucas, the 82-year-old Democrat who spearheaded the plan, hit back at [Senator Cruz], saying, "You all started it and we f---ing finished it," referring to a controversial redistricting effort in Texas that sparked fights over districts in several states. ... Democrats across the country were left fuming after the U.S. Supreme Court moved to allow Texas to use redrawn congressional maps.
• Obama Lies To Sway An Election March 30, 2026
  Like the misleading official Explanation published by the Commonwealth and the language on the ballot itself, Obama’s election pitches are false and intended to rig the election to unfairly deprive almost half of Virginia’s voters of effective congressional representation of their choice. 
• Redistricting Battle In Virginia Has Soros-affiliated Dark Money Flowing Through The State Like Poison April 21, 2026
• Virginia Redistricting Referendum Election Results: Y51.7% N48.3% April 21, 2026
• Virginia Dems Pull Off Massive Power Grab, Win Vote To Redraw Political Map April 21, 2026
• [VA Governor] Spanberger (D) Gloats About Redistricting Referendum Squeaking By: ‘Voters Have Spoken’ April 21, 2026
  [She's been a very busy naughty girl.]
• Spanberger Signs Law [HB965] Which Will Award VA's Electoral College Votes To Popular Vote Winner April 14, 2026
  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, scil. HB965: Virginia agrees to award all 13 of its electoral votes to the presidential ticket that wins the national popular vote across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, regardless of the outcome of the vote within Virginia.
  [Prior to joining the compact Virginia used a winner-take-all system for its Electoral College votes, meaning the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote receives all of the state's electoral votes. Watch what you wish for, Dawgs.]
• DAMNING Thread BUSTS Spanberger For Being Even SHADIER In Redistricting April 24, 2026
• Luke Rosiak On X (severally) April 24, 2026: Incredible: Gov. Spanberger (D-VA) told localities NOT to post pictures of the gerrymandered maps that people were voting on, saying they should direct people to the General Assembly's [GA, infra] website if they wanted to know. But the General Assembly doesn't seem to show the maps either! 
• Despite asking people to vote in making a 52-48 state have 91-9 representation in Congress, the 'redistricting' page on the GA's website hasn't been updated in years, and just links to the Redistricting Commission--which the amendment does away with, and also has only old maps.
• I've spent a while looking at the GA's website, Dept of Elections, etc, and have not found the maps prominently available on any public source. If they are there at all, they're not where voters could reasonably find them. ... Looks like to find the map, a voter would have to go to lis dot virginia dot gov, somehow know to search "Budget Bill," then click a link to "http://blob.core.windows.net"
• Jeffries: GOP Will Be Lucky To Gain 2 Seats In Texas, We TOOK AWAY 4 In Virginia As ‘Response’ To Gerrymandering April 21, 2026
• [Senator Tim] Kaine (D): Virginia Stood Up To Trump’s Tyranny April 21, 2026
  “So we’re going to stand up against tyrants and try to match what he’s doing. And that’s what Virginians did tonight.”
• Tim Kaine Inadvertently Blurts Out The Truth About Virginia's Gerrymandering Scheme April 20, 2026
  Fox: Why should 90% of Virginia's congressional delegation be Democrats when Kamala Harris only won the state by 5 points?
  Kaine: 90% of Virginians are not Democrats. That's true... but we need a congressional delegation that will stand up to Donald Trump's tyranny.
  [Backstop, it's always Trump 24/7/365¼. The argument here is that after red states being short-sheeted in the 2020 census, corrective mid-decadal redistricting is tyrannical and wrong. But since Dems have no principled objection, they will tyrannically and wrongly respond in kind. Tim Kaine is such an embarrassment, a clown.]
• ‘Unconscionable Liar’ Obama Celebrates Virginia Disenfranchising Hundreds Of Thousands Of Voters April 22, 2026
  “Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet. Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.”
• The FOO On X April 22, 2026: Democrats spent ~$70 MILLION on this referendum. Almost every penny came from out of state.
  They broke laws. They wrote a deceitful ballot measure.
  They ran tv spots for two months, nonstop.
  They brought in Obama. They brought in Hollywood.
  We had grassroots. That’s really it.
  They only beat us by 70k votes. In an April election.
  Here’s the most ironic part … what do you notice? All that money, all that effort, and all they did was prove our 6/5 map is accurate. Almost exactly.
  
  
  
• L. Louise Lucas On X April 27, 2026: We have now had over 100 “Ten Fuckin’ One” shirts ordered and raised over $5k to help defend our Virginia Senate Democratic majority that delivered these maps!
  [Let's be honest. That is one shitty $50 gloat tee. Can we reach across the aisle on this one? Hakeem?]

Oh. Wait a minute.

• Trump Blasts Virginia Redistricting Vote As 'Rigged' After Late Ballot Surge Flips Tight Race To Dems April 22, 2026
• The Lone Racoon On X April 23, 2026: Until I see data pointing otherwise, it looks like Fairfax was used as the vote bank, and they waited to withdraw  when they needed a bump. [More here.]
• USA On X April23, 2026: There it is folks!  Three separate Dumps [F-Curves]!
  TOTALING 65,000 VOTES! And every vote was a YES!
  Which was impossible! They [Fairfax County] only had 3 high speed scanners!
   65,000 votes in 5 MINUTES was impossible! 

• America First Policy Institute: Election Probe Targets 'Unusual' Reports In Wake Of Virginia Redistricting Referendum April 28, 2026
  Fairfax County reported a late tranche of votes that helped the 'Yes' camp cross the finish line in the referendum
  [This is the election day MO for Fairfax, wait and dump the differential plus the marginal win.]

WHOA! WHOA, Dawgs!

• Not So Fast: Virginia Judge Blocks Redistricting Referendum April 22, 2026
  A Virginia judge ruled on Wednesday that the state’s redistricting referendum approved by voters a day earlier was invalid, nullifying the election results. ... Judge Hurley’s ruling declares that any and all votes for OR against the proposed constitutional amendment in the April 21, 2026 special election are ineffective and enjoins Defendants and their successors from certifying the results of the election. 
• Former Republican Attorney General Of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli: Virginia Dems May Have Gerrymandered Themselves Straight Into A Legal Buzzsaw April 24, 2026
• Virginia Supreme Court Just Dropped A One-sentence Hammer On Dems' Gerrymander Scheme April 28, 2026
  SCOVA has denied VA Attorney General’s [Jay Jones of two bullet notoriety] Motion for Emergency Stay... One sentence. No dissent. No partial relief.
  
  “Upon consideration whereof, the Court denies the motion.”
• Virginia’s Constitution Is Not A Suggestion: An Analysis Of The Unconstitutional Redistricting Scheme May 1, 2026
  [This article provides a good breakdown of the several Constitutional issues before SCOVA. In ranked ineffectuating order, i.e., the court need only rule FOR the plaintiff on one issue to void the referendum, any issues still pending rendered moot and NOT adjudicated. The defendant must survive ALL challenges or the vote is voided.] 

We all want 'fairness' even at the expense of Constitutional abuse, yes? Actually NO.

• VIRGINIA SUPREME COURT KILLS DEMOCRAT GERRYMANDER SCHEME
  May 8, 2026
• Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Gerrymandered Maps In ‘MASSIVE’ LOSS For Dems’ Attempt To Take [scil., STEAL] 4 More House Seats May 8, 2026
• Donald J. Trump On Truth Social May 8, 2026: Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP
  
• PoliMath On X May 9, 2026: All the “smart” Democrats are saying that the court should have addressed this issue before the election. But the Court says IN THE DECISION: “Thoughout this litigation, the Commonwealth (ie the Democrats) has insisted that we cannot lawfully decide this case prior to the referendum”.  
  

Oh NOOoooes! Let us check in on Mudville.

• Hakeem Jeffries On X May 8, 2026: The decision by the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn the will of more than three million voters [!?] will not stand.
  [Hakeem, how will it not stand? Where can you shop your appeal? (BTW, redistricting was the will of only 1.6M voters of that 3M.) Read his whole statement at the link. Whatever has become of 'maxium warfare, everywhere, all the time'? What has become of the April 21 gloat? What has become of the midterms? More here. Dawg, pull up your pants and stop with the tough-talk microstiffy.]
• Matthew Klein On X May 8, 2026: Overturn this decision? It’s a ruling from the State Supreme Court on a state constitutional matter, who are you going to appeal it to? God?
• Kamala Harris Claims SCOVA ‘Ignored the Will Of The People’ By Killing Democrat Gerrymander Plan May 8, 2026
• Jonathan Turley On X May 8, 2026: Hakeen Jeffries: “F around and find out”
  Virginia Supreme Court: The Democratic position "ends poorly." ...
  ... The court found that the gerrymandering effort is "wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history." It characterized the position as a "clever argument is a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail."
• Democrats In Disarray After Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down Redistricting Referendum May 8, 2026: Axios reported that some Democrats are now openly questioning whether spending roughly $62.5 million to support the Virginia referendum effort was worth the investment. Nearly $40 million reportedly came from Hakeem Jeffries-aligned House Majority Forward. “I feel like this is a colossal waste of resources that will further erode our politics,” one House Democrat told Axios. Another asked, “How many millions of dollars are we spending on this when the DNC is in debt and we have 40 frontline races to win?” 
  Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger: “I am disappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling, but my focus as Governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November in the midterm elections because in those elections we — the voters — will have the final say.” [Ooh PUH-leeze! See Luke Rosiak bullets above.]
• Gavin Newsom On X May 8, 2026: No vote in Tennessee (+1 GOP); No vote in Florida (+4 GOP); No vote in Missouri (+1 GOP); No vote in North Carolina (+2 GOP); No vote in Texas (+5 GOP); Virginia’s voter-approved maps thrown out. MAGA has rigged the system.
  [Glad to see SOMEONE keeping score at the DNC.]
• Gavin Newsom On X May 7, 2026: Confederate states are rushing through rigged maps to erase Black districts off the map.
  
   
  [Oh, Gavin, you sweet summer child. Confederate states? Way to win the South in 2028. Wait! Your map OMITS VA, the arch Confederate state, the state that hosted the capital of the CSA. Why? Also, best brush up on latest SCOTUS VRA ruling, the Dems' imagined right to segregated 'black' districts is Constitutionally disallowed.]
  

In conclusion, dear reader, sometimes life is sweet, and sometimes it is all-day-double-portions-of-ice-cream-&-cake and indescribably DELICIOUS!

• FBI Raids Office Of Virginia Democrat Behind 'Ten F---in' One' Gerrymander Map May 6, 2026
• Virginia Democratic State Senator [L. Louise Luca] Suggests FBI Search Of Her Office Was Politically Motivated May 7, 2026
  The search, according to NBC News, was part of an investigation into public corruption, which started during the Biden administration. It targeted Lucas' office in Portsmouth and a nearby marijuana dispensary that Lucas owns. While the Drug Enforcement Administration is involved in the investigation, an official told NBC that drugs aren't the primary focus.

• Virginia Redistricting Ruling Revives Never-Litigated Questions About California's Prop 50 Scheme May 8, 2026
  [Good article. Worth the full read.]

Coda:

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Jeffries has struck out.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! -- Excuse me, a final word. Redistricting is presented by both parties as rightful spoils, court-sanctioned certainties. There is some truth to that, but never lose sight -- as the chatty panel pundits do -- that every seat is contestable and the quality of a candidate is a better bet, the correct civic disposition, than a legislative штурмовщина's dog's breakfast. Alright, where was I? -- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! [Snort.]