President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, latest book The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, Draper Chair at UConn
Aug 31, 2024 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Folks now that I have your attention, here is a thread on a huge problem in local television news much of it is owned by the right wing Sinclair Broadcasting Co. I watch our local news @wbz to see how far the bias goes. Well recently they covered Vance being audibly booed.
The whole report carried Vance’s lies and no comment on the booing. Meanwhile they barely covered Walzs remark as who got a much warmer welcome.
Jul 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
1. Thread involving a Kafkaesque ending to my wonderful Germany stint as Visiting Professor @UniHeidelberg. No thanks to @CustomGermany at @Airport_FRA where two rude (to everyone) customs officials scammed me. I went to receive a minor sales tax back on stuff I bought from WMF
2. They made me fill out numerous forms and then said I had committed a “crime” because I didn’t have the stuff I bought with me. @lufthansa asked me to check my hand luggage and I obliged willingly forgetting that is wear I packed the items I had bought
Oct 7, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🧵 Civil War historian here and just finished watching @colbertlateshow interview with @BretBaier on his new book on Grant. And the bloopers made me not want to read this book! Hayes and his handlers and not Grant were responsible for the Compromise of 1877!
2. And yes good on @StephenAtHome for pushing him on the abandonment of Reconstruction. But while Grant responded to the rise of the KKK and racist terror, by 1875 he pretty much abandoned Mississippi to racist terror. On the defensive he did not act setting up 1877.
Jun 27, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Historian’s thread: 1. Reading @DouthatNYT column today that sounds very reasonable in both siding the debate over the manufactured CRT controversy but it is actually not. While dwelling on extreme examples from the “left” he gives the “right” a pass.
2. Completely glosses over the neo Confederate reactionary base of the G coup P by a throwaway line on allegedly vague (therefore implying inconsequential) state laws to dictate the teaching of history and against removal of Confederate statues and monuments.
May 30, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1 Historian’s thread: you may wake up to see the seditious GQP trying to deflect attention from their vote enabling a violent coup by disinformation as usual. So create a faux controversy over an innocuous tweet? Well what is Memorial Day all about?
2. The origins of Memorial Day lie in former enslaved people decorating the graves of Union Army soldiers in the south. So when @GOP protects and defends armed barbaric insurrectionists flying the Confederate battle flag we know which side they are on!
Jan 10, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Thread from a historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction, my unsolicited advice to @DNC 1. Trump should be either impeached or removed through the 25th amendment as already agreed but @SenatorHawleyMO@tedcruz should be expelled when we have a majority.
2. All Senate and House @GOP Representatives and Senators who challenged the Electoral College results should be censured. Eventually we need an amendment to get rid of the EC!
Jan 17, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
@VP full of so many historical errors and revisionist views of Reconstruction that I am forced into a thread of correction! Not surprising to see him defend a racist buffoon like Johnson. Let me refer you to an opposing point of view nytimes.com/2019/11/29/opi…
@VP 1. JFK changed his mind about Reconstruction when he was forced to send federal troops to desegregate Ole Miss. Not clear if he even wrote Profiles in Courage or whether it was ghost written.
