nothing like making yourself sad by thinking about the way things would be today if reconstruction had actually been allowed to run its course
I mean! Black people actually enfranchised for a whole damn extra century!! With their rights and lives and humanity forcefully defended!! For that entire time!!
I’m reading “The Impeachers” by Brenda Wineapple about Johnson’s impeachment and there’s this bit about how devastatingly clear it was early on that things were still horrific for blacks in the South. But Johnson, a white supremacist like most leaders of the time, didn’t care 
Two things I simultaneously believe:
- the articles of impeachment against Johnson were weak and the law he ignored that triggered them was dumb and clearly unconstitutional
- he was a terrible president who was actively harmful to black Americans and should have been removed
- the articles of impeachment against Johnson were weak and the law he ignored that triggered them was dumb and clearly unconstitutional
- he was a terrible president who was actively harmful to black Americans and should have been removed
Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, on the other hand, is and will forever be my dude
A former Confederate wanted his mansion back and Andrew Johnson literally forced his generals to allow a black orphanage to be evicted from it
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