The year 1860 would like a word. In all seriousness, the tendency not to see the secession crisis as an election crisis says interesting things about the memory of the Civil War. I think it's a product of the ideological work done by two otherwise opposed memories.

As long as we're all here waiting, let me tell you about James Forten and the long struggle for voting rights in Philadelphia. Forten was born a free man in PA in 1766. Stood outside the State House to hear the first reading of the Declaration of Independence. Was captured by the British while serving on a patriot privateer in the Revolution. But could he vote in the new republic?

1. Here's a short thought experiment that might help students or others understand why historians today reject "states' rights" as the cause of the Civil War. Imagine that 150 years from now, someone tells you that conservatives in 2020 were defenders of states' rights ... 2. That person would be able to produce lots of quotes seeming to support their point. A Texas governor, e.g., saying Texas knows best how to handle its own coronavirus response. Resistance to federal stimulus dollars, etc.

Still digesting & reacting to @adamgopnik's new essay in @NewYorker about Reconstruction. But among the questions at the forefront of my mind: Where are the women? newyorker.com/magazine/2019/… Where is @TeraHunter's account of African Americans' creative struggle before & after emancipation to win recognition of their marriages & families, a history that challenges his revival of Elkins's comparison of slavery to concentration camps?

A good example of a common historical phenomenon that too many non-historians don't know about: the mortgaging of enslaved people to secure credit for their owners. As "people with a price," they were exploited as capital assets, not only as laborers.

https://twitter.com/fotmproject/status/1107645581441331200

For more on this subject, see the important work of Bonnie Martin in @JourSouHist jstor.org/stable/27919281