One hundred and fifty nine years ago this week, in 1862, 75,000 United States troops and about 38,000 Confederate troops massed along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. After a successful summer of fighting, Confederate general Robert E. Lee had crossed the Potomac River into Maryland to bring the Civil War to the North. He hoped to swing the slave state of Maryland into rebellion and to weaken Lincoln’s war policies in the upcoming 1862 elections. For his part, Union general George McClellan hoped to finish off the southern Army of Northern Virginia that had snaked away from him all summer.
Sobering and stark, this letter reminds me of two very important things: first, ideas have consequences, and BAD ideas, especially lies, can grip an entire a nation in the clenched fist of death and the darkness of war. Second, I am reminded that citizen journalism — A man with a camera, or a woman who can tell a story — can break the grip of lies, shatter the darkness and change the course of a nation. Never stop telling your story, Heather. And may the rest of us join our voices to yours.
On Friday, September 17, 2021, the North Carolina, a Court issued a 101 page, FINAL JUDGMENT & ORDER in Jabari Holmes, et al. vs. Timothy K. Moore in his official capacity as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives finding "persuasive evidence" of North Carolina's unconstitutional discriminatory intent "followed immediately after [by] racially Gerrymandered Districts. This ruling amounts to a permanent injunction in NC's "General Court of Justice" against North Carolina's flagrant attack on black voters in S.B 824. That law has been struck down.
Heather, a sobering post where images bring the reality of war to the home front. “Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing…When will we ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?”
Your words and these Letters From an American are a gift to us all. Thank you!
I posted this the other day but wanted to highlight it as a testament to your work:
Congratulations 🎉 Heather Cox Richardson on being recognized by the Massachusetts Governor’s Awards in the Humanities.
“The Massachusetts Governor’s Awards in the Humanities recognize individuals for their public actions, grounded in an appreciation of the humanities, to enhance civic life in the Commonwealth.”
As one of 4 individuals recognized, the announcement states:
“Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College and the author of six acclaimed books about American politics, most recently How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Her books, West from Appomattox and To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party were Editor’s Choice selections of the New York Times Book Review. Richardson is a national commentator on American political history and the Republican Party. She is a leading #Twitterstorian, and the author of Letters from an American, a chronicle of modern political history that appears on Facebook and in newsletter format. With Professor Joanne Freeman, she is the co-host of the podcast Now & Then. Read more in the interview “What Was at Stake in Our History.””
Thank you for all you do. You have earned this award and more! Here! Here! ❤️😊🎉
Congratulations for the Massachusetts Governor's Award in the Humanities. It is so well deserved! We appreciate your letters each day and find them to be essential reading as we try to navigate life during these difficult times.
An artist's work in rallying public awareness is not always rewarded. During the war, Brady spent over $100,000 to create over 10,000 plates. He expected the U.S. government to buy the photographs when the war ended, but when the government refused to do so he was forced to sell his New York City studio and go into bankruptcy. Congress granted Brady $25,000 in 1875, but he remained deeply in debt. Depressed by his financial situation, loss of eyesight and devastated by the death of his wife in 1887, he became very lonely. He died penniless in the charity ward of Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1896, from complications following a streetcar accident. Brady's funeral was financed by veterans of the 7th New York Infantry. He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
It is terrible that we need to be reminded of the tragedy of Civil War, but we live in a time when many Americans seem to have fallen once again for the idea of national division and separation, as though that could be achieved bloodlessly. Perhaps as Tom Nichols suggests, we have had it so good in this country for so long that we have lost the capacity to believe that real national bloodletting and tragedy could ever really occur again in our time. Thank God that there are people like you, Heather, who have the interest and concern and ability to write clearly about history and remind us of the reason it has to be studied. As a people we seem to have forgotten that we are part of history and, in this world, cannot remove ourselves from the rhythm of its flow. Now, perhaps more than ever in our national history, we need to remember the lessons our forebears had to learn-- before it is too late.
We are looking now at the prospect of becoming the citizens of a resurrected Confederate States of America rather than the citizens of the America we grew up in. Today, wealthy corporate oligarchs appear to have replaced the plantation owners.
It is easy for the right to talk with bluster about inflicting violence. They do love their guns, the more destructive the better. But using them and have the guns of their perceived enemies turned on them is an altogether different matter, once the disfigured bodies begin to accumulate.
But they are frothing for a fight. They've convinced themselves, with ample help from their manipulators, that the election was stolen and that protections against the spread of Covid are tyranny. (A restaurant worker in NYC was beaten Thursday by three women from Texas for asking to see proof of their vaccinations.)
I hope September 18th won't become a day of infamy. It's unlikely. Republicans at the state level are content to dismantle democracy brick by brick by suppressing voting and undermining confidence in elections with their faux audits. They don't appreciate the backlash that's headed their way.
What a stunning letter! By my count it was 3 years of this deadly war of mangled corpses that took place after Antietam and after the photographs were exhibited. What is it that causes young men to huddle in trenches and charge toward certain death or maiming on the orders of their superiors? I remember vividly the televised images of Vietnam that came to our breakfast tables each morning - and although we protested and marched and opposed the war, still young men put themselves in harms way again and again. And now we’ve just ended a 20 year war, but there are still voices saying we should have continued. Still in army basic training young men are taught to plunge their bayonets into the most vulnerable part of a human body to rip and shred vital organs. And even in my own psyche there is an angry core that wants to harm and destroy those who not only support The Big Lie but daily seek to overturn facts and truth in service of their own ambitions for power and control over me and the ones I love.
What conclusion can be reached from all this? I sit here shocked to be reminded of man’s inhumanity to man - indeed of my own potential to participate in this inhumanity should things progress to immediate combat where my own family and loved ones are threatened by an enemies made up of my fellow countrymen.
Morning, all!! Morning, Dr. R!! In keeping with today's Letter, it is my preference that September 18, 2021, will turn out to be just an ordinary, uneventful day in the nation's capital and throughout the country.
While cleaning up my inbox this morning, this article written by Aaron Blake of The Washington Post grabbed my attention. I don't think it was a coincidence that I found it so easily. Its title is "The role of physical threats in Trump’s domination of the GOP."
Every congressman and congresswoman should read this LFAA which would remind them that according to our Constitution, all men are created equal. And with that understanding, to deny any American the right to vote is against the Constitution. Express mail the Letter to your governor, every senator, every want-to-be presidential candidate. I am sending it to my local county newspaper.
It's Saturday. The sun is shining here. I lost my two comments this morning, when just about finished with each. I found an easy solution. We are each of us dealing with the consequences of the former president's behavior, the actions of the Republican Party, the pandemic and what's left of life -- some very good stuff, which we just have to locate.
In Heather's beautiful thank you letter to us, a few of her words, particularly, stood out to me:
'especially your kindness'
I second that. It is what holds us together and makes the Forum the place we want to be together.
Freaking stupendous, Heather! A Birmingham, Alabama native, I heard many times the Civil War was not about slavery, but was about states rights and rich northern merchants trying to control America. Yet, northern merchants made a great deal of money off the South's cotton, which was grown and harvested by African slaves. Cotton was the South's CASH CROP. Without African slaves, the South would lose that CASH CROP and northern merchants would have to look elsewhere for cotton. So, yeah, the Civil War was about slavery, and the Republican Party's President Abraham Lincoln was put to wage that war or let the Confederacy have its way.
Flash forward.
The white January 6 mob and their leader Donald Trump represent what never was resolved by the American Civil War - White Supremacy. Trump gave them new hope. He resuscitated them. When they claim the 2021 election was stolen, they mean blacks stole it. They don't say that, because that would force the Republican Party to disavow them and Trump, or be vilified in Eternity. The Republican Party knows this. By keeping silent, by ignoring January 6, they stand in God's Court just as guilty of the attempted White Supremacy coup as the white mob and Trump and every person who claims the 2021 election was stolen, including black Republicans, who who in olden times were called Uncle Toms.
The Republican Party today is the White Supremacist Party, and Republicans who say they abhor White Supremacy, the KKK, Nazis, but do not act like it, do not bolt that party, or splinter from it a new Republican Party, are White Supremacists, too. The law is very clear about aiding and abetting and offering safe harbor to criminals, and that's what the Republican Party are doing by not rebelling and calling for the heads of the January 6 white mob and Donald Trump. As in, they all should be hanged. Every last one of them. For attempting a coup of the National Government, in the National Capitol, on National Television.
Your morning letter is always a balm, strangely as it both upsets and educates me. I feel that you are a wise and thoughtful neighbor, come to share reflections over first coffee. I marvel at your intelligent insights and historic perspective. Thank you!
Sobering and stark, this letter reminds me of two very important things: first, ideas have consequences, and BAD ideas, especially lies, can grip an entire a nation in the clenched fist of death and the darkness of war. Second, I am reminded that citizen journalism — A man with a camera, or a woman who can tell a story — can break the grip of lies, shatter the darkness and change the course of a nation. Never stop telling your story, Heather. And may the rest of us join our voices to yours.
On Friday, September 17, 2021, the North Carolina, a Court issued a 101 page, FINAL JUDGMENT & ORDER in Jabari Holmes, et al. vs. Timothy K. Moore in his official capacity as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives finding "persuasive evidence" of North Carolina's unconstitutional discriminatory intent "followed immediately after [by] racially Gerrymandered Districts. This ruling amounts to a permanent injunction in NC's "General Court of Justice" against North Carolina's flagrant attack on black voters in S.B 824. That law has been struck down.
Heather, a sobering post where images bring the reality of war to the home front. “Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing…When will we ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?”
Your words and these Letters From an American are a gift to us all. Thank you!
I posted this the other day but wanted to highlight it as a testament to your work:
Congratulations 🎉 Heather Cox Richardson on being recognized by the Massachusetts Governor’s Awards in the Humanities.
“The Massachusetts Governor’s Awards in the Humanities recognize individuals for their public actions, grounded in an appreciation of the humanities, to enhance civic life in the Commonwealth.”
As one of 4 individuals recognized, the announcement states:
“Heather Cox Richardson is professor of history at Boston College and the author of six acclaimed books about American politics, most recently How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. Her books, West from Appomattox and To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party were Editor’s Choice selections of the New York Times Book Review. Richardson is a national commentator on American political history and the Republican Party. She is a leading #Twitterstorian, and the author of Letters from an American, a chronicle of modern political history that appears on Facebook and in newsletter format. With Professor Joanne Freeman, she is the co-host of the podcast Now & Then. Read more in the interview “What Was at Stake in Our History.””
Thank you for all you do. You have earned this award and more! Here! Here! ❤️😊🎉
https://masshumanities.org/events/governors-awards-in-the-humanities-dinner/?fbclid=IwAR1wNYFTfboWZwS-c99RG0NeX_ayr6pAE0brOH8gMKSH-ZSidLcf-oM9wHI_aem_AX_d0D-S51F9F2IsTiuy4xVxsxhyrlS1hua2qzJQ1pTMSHlpGClyeIixHzmcFVgpqtEn-CWo0psaG41UMQ3OLlKfuSAoYYx6guNcMHpCOABsYep4m_WBcbqfMWM_BoBuNt
*The link contains a video interview with HCR, worth watching!
Congratulations for the Massachusetts Governor's Award in the Humanities. It is so well deserved! We appreciate your letters each day and find them to be essential reading as we try to navigate life during these difficult times.
An artist's work in rallying public awareness is not always rewarded. During the war, Brady spent over $100,000 to create over 10,000 plates. He expected the U.S. government to buy the photographs when the war ended, but when the government refused to do so he was forced to sell his New York City studio and go into bankruptcy. Congress granted Brady $25,000 in 1875, but he remained deeply in debt. Depressed by his financial situation, loss of eyesight and devastated by the death of his wife in 1887, he became very lonely. He died penniless in the charity ward of Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1896, from complications following a streetcar accident. Brady's funeral was financed by veterans of the 7th New York Infantry. He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
It is terrible that we need to be reminded of the tragedy of Civil War, but we live in a time when many Americans seem to have fallen once again for the idea of national division and separation, as though that could be achieved bloodlessly. Perhaps as Tom Nichols suggests, we have had it so good in this country for so long that we have lost the capacity to believe that real national bloodletting and tragedy could ever really occur again in our time. Thank God that there are people like you, Heather, who have the interest and concern and ability to write clearly about history and remind us of the reason it has to be studied. As a people we seem to have forgotten that we are part of history and, in this world, cannot remove ourselves from the rhythm of its flow. Now, perhaps more than ever in our national history, we need to remember the lessons our forebears had to learn-- before it is too late.
We are looking now at the prospect of becoming the citizens of a resurrected Confederate States of America rather than the citizens of the America we grew up in. Today, wealthy corporate oligarchs appear to have replaced the plantation owners.
It is easy for the right to talk with bluster about inflicting violence. They do love their guns, the more destructive the better. But using them and have the guns of their perceived enemies turned on them is an altogether different matter, once the disfigured bodies begin to accumulate.
But they are frothing for a fight. They've convinced themselves, with ample help from their manipulators, that the election was stolen and that protections against the spread of Covid are tyranny. (A restaurant worker in NYC was beaten Thursday by three women from Texas for asking to see proof of their vaccinations.)
I hope September 18th won't become a day of infamy. It's unlikely. Republicans at the state level are content to dismantle democracy brick by brick by suppressing voting and undermining confidence in elections with their faux audits. They don't appreciate the backlash that's headed their way.
What a stunning letter! By my count it was 3 years of this deadly war of mangled corpses that took place after Antietam and after the photographs were exhibited. What is it that causes young men to huddle in trenches and charge toward certain death or maiming on the orders of their superiors? I remember vividly the televised images of Vietnam that came to our breakfast tables each morning - and although we protested and marched and opposed the war, still young men put themselves in harms way again and again. And now we’ve just ended a 20 year war, but there are still voices saying we should have continued. Still in army basic training young men are taught to plunge their bayonets into the most vulnerable part of a human body to rip and shred vital organs. And even in my own psyche there is an angry core that wants to harm and destroy those who not only support The Big Lie but daily seek to overturn facts and truth in service of their own ambitions for power and control over me and the ones I love.
What conclusion can be reached from all this? I sit here shocked to be reminded of man’s inhumanity to man - indeed of my own potential to participate in this inhumanity should things progress to immediate combat where my own family and loved ones are threatened by an enemies made up of my fellow countrymen.
Heather, this is perhaps one of the most vivid and powerful letters you've written. Thank you. And congratulations!
Morning, all!! Morning, Dr. R!! In keeping with today's Letter, it is my preference that September 18, 2021, will turn out to be just an ordinary, uneventful day in the nation's capital and throughout the country.
While cleaning up my inbox this morning, this article written by Aaron Blake of The Washington Post grabbed my attention. I don't think it was a coincidence that I found it so easily. Its title is "The role of physical threats in Trump’s domination of the GOP."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/17/how-trump-dominates-gop-by-fear-quite-literally/?utm_campaign=wp_the_5_minute_fix&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_fix&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F34b4c73%2F614504339d2fda9d41d22a74%2F5e865b08ade4e21f59b0a68d%2F24%2F48%2F614504339d2fda9d41d22a74
Every congressman and congresswoman should read this LFAA which would remind them that according to our Constitution, all men are created equal. And with that understanding, to deny any American the right to vote is against the Constitution. Express mail the Letter to your governor, every senator, every want-to-be presidential candidate. I am sending it to my local county newspaper.
Alexander Gardner's Civil War photographs in the National Archives:
https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.parentNaId=533274&f.level=item&sort=naIdSort%20asc&offset=20
It's Saturday. The sun is shining here. I lost my two comments this morning, when just about finished with each. I found an easy solution. We are each of us dealing with the consequences of the former president's behavior, the actions of the Republican Party, the pandemic and what's left of life -- some very good stuff, which we just have to locate.
In Heather's beautiful thank you letter to us, a few of her words, particularly, stood out to me:
'especially your kindness'
I second that. It is what holds us together and makes the Forum the place we want to be together.
Freaking stupendous, Heather! A Birmingham, Alabama native, I heard many times the Civil War was not about slavery, but was about states rights and rich northern merchants trying to control America. Yet, northern merchants made a great deal of money off the South's cotton, which was grown and harvested by African slaves. Cotton was the South's CASH CROP. Without African slaves, the South would lose that CASH CROP and northern merchants would have to look elsewhere for cotton. So, yeah, the Civil War was about slavery, and the Republican Party's President Abraham Lincoln was put to wage that war or let the Confederacy have its way.
Flash forward.
The white January 6 mob and their leader Donald Trump represent what never was resolved by the American Civil War - White Supremacy. Trump gave them new hope. He resuscitated them. When they claim the 2021 election was stolen, they mean blacks stole it. They don't say that, because that would force the Republican Party to disavow them and Trump, or be vilified in Eternity. The Republican Party knows this. By keeping silent, by ignoring January 6, they stand in God's Court just as guilty of the attempted White Supremacy coup as the white mob and Trump and every person who claims the 2021 election was stolen, including black Republicans, who who in olden times were called Uncle Toms.
The Republican Party today is the White Supremacist Party, and Republicans who say they abhor White Supremacy, the KKK, Nazis, but do not act like it, do not bolt that party, or splinter from it a new Republican Party, are White Supremacists, too. The law is very clear about aiding and abetting and offering safe harbor to criminals, and that's what the Republican Party are doing by not rebelling and calling for the heads of the January 6 white mob and Donald Trump. As in, they all should be hanged. Every last one of them. For attempting a coup of the National Government, in the National Capitol, on National Television.
Your morning letter is always a balm, strangely as it both upsets and educates me. I feel that you are a wise and thoughtful neighbor, come to share reflections over first coffee. I marvel at your intelligent insights and historic perspective. Thank you!