Reviews for A Populist reader; selections from the works of American Populist leaders

The average rating for A Populist reader; selections from the works of American Populist leaders based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-23 00:00:00 David Dean There's real value to be gained in diving from the bird's eye view of history to the ground level. In most histories of Reconstruction and its aftermath, the "Compromise of 1877" meant Northern Republicans conceded to Southern Democrats the power to oppress blacks in their section without interference. In return, the Republicans got the presidency and control of the federal government. But this book, by looking specifically at election fraud and election rights cases in the South after 1877, shows that Republicans never conceded the region to whites, terrorism, and one-party Democratic rule. Over the 15 years after the supposed Compromise, by using the first "Enforcement Act" of May 1870, they prosecuted over 1,100 cases involving the denial of the right to vote to blacks, Independents, and Republicans, and got convictions in about a third of those cases. It was not a revolution, but it was a determined effort. Now, this author should not have tried to list and describe almost every possible voting case by every U.S. district attorney, but such descriptions do give the reader a feel for the dilemmas in succeeding in the battle for voting rights. The most important obstacle was the near impossibility of getting unanimous criminal verdicts against violators. Although blacks were allowed on juries, the threshold of jury unanimity was near insuperable unless the cases were perfect. They usually weren't. Some US district attorneys had Southern if still Republican sympathies, some were patronage appointments, many worried about instigating riots if a case was pressed to hard, others kept delaying cases until the next election had passed, after which they dropped the old ones to focus on newer cases. Many witnesses and litigants were killed before they could testify. Still, the author shows that from the start, Rutherford B. Hayes was sincere in his attempts to enforce voting rights. As an attorney in Cincinnati, he had defended fugitive slaves. As early as 1866 he had said "universal suffrage is sound in principle, the radical element is right." In his inaugural, he said that for peace to truly reign, first the new civil rights amendments be enforced. Later President James Garfield in a North American Review article argued that the 15th Amendment should be enforced to its full extent: "Suffrage is the sword and shield of our law, the best armament the liberty offers to the citizen," and again focused on the subject in his inaugural address. Even Democratic Grover Cleveland felt compelled to enforce the voting rights laws in egregious cases. The author also shows that the Supreme Court did not eviscerate the voting rights amendments in U.S. v. Cruikshank and U.S. v. Reese cases in 1876. Rather, they struck down some minor criminal penalties in the enforcement act because they were not directly related to racial disenfranchisement as the 15th amendment demanded. But in 1883 in ex parte Yarborough, they fully and unanimously upheld a prosecution against a violent Southern "club." Justice Miller said that since the Southern states unquestionably gave whites the vote, the 15th Amendment ban on race-based voting discrimination does "substantially confer in the negro the right to vote, and Congress has the power to protect and enforce that right." Due to these efforts, Benjamin Harrison got more votes in the South than any Republican since Reconstruction, and he too promised in his inaugural to secure the ballot, but when Democrats regained power in 1893 they repealed the laws. The book demonstrates that black disenfranchisement (which more often worked through voter fraud and "kissing ballots" and stuffed boxes than real violence) was so common in the South that unless the North was willing to suspend Southern "civil liberties" by denying typical jury trials and imposing a form of martial law, they could not win. That step may have been necessary, but it was not done and hardly even contemplated. Ultimately the "shield" of the vote was taken from blacks, and the South entered almost 70 years of darkness, hatred, and segregation.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-12 00:00:00 Dineen Yuknis I must say I knew very little about Thomas Jefferson. I am also surprised and a little dismayed when our heroes don't think, act, respond to their world in the way we as Americans would or should respond. Being the perfect humans we all are. But that's just the point. Thomas Jefferson was very human and flawed. Yet he had a brilliance and a passion that has endured over 200 years though sometimes minimally. I could never figure out why we in 2012 look back to 1776 and wonder why our founding fathers did not grant full women rights, free the slaves, vanquish child labor or just, "Do the right thing." I do have an understanding that many of our founding fathers regretted not being able to abolish slavery and knew that in some near distant future the matter would be dealt with and probably with violence. It was not going to go away without a fight. This book is basic and easily understood. It speaks in a simple way of all the accomplishments of Jefferson, the proudest being his establishment of the University of Virginia and the writing of the constitution of Virginia. After all, he was a Virginian before he was a Patriot. So if you want a light reading novel of some of the greatest events that occurred in American History, this would be a fine novel to read.