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Following Kamala Harris’ defeat and the GOP’s congressional successes in the 2024 elections, many Democrats are expressing not only rage and frustration, but fear. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency will provide him the opportunity to ensure the Supreme Court remains firmly in conservative hands for the foreseeable future. Many Democrats fear the radical and tyrannical policies Trump has promised to enact upon his ascendance to office: the revocation of broadcast licenses of critical media outlets, the punishing of politicians and entire states that did not support him, and perhaps most infamously, a claim that he would be “a dictator on day one.”
While concerning, these threats are far from novel. Indeed, they mirror what conservatives did in the aftermath of the Civil War. Ex-confederates during Reconstruction levied claims of fraud, enacted de-registration campaigns, and even destroyed the physical ballots of their opponents. The most devastating tool conservatives had in 1868, however, was the susceptibility of white Americans to racist rhetoric, a power that remains an animating force in American politics today.
The 1868 election remains the most violent in U.S. history. Black Americans had just received the right to vote thanks to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts and the 14th Amendment, but formal suffrage rights did not guarantee that Black Americans could exercise that right without threat of reprisal. Though federal troops occupied some portions of the South to curb political and racial violence, most regions, like St. Tammany Parish, La., lacked any meaningful federal presence.
Read More: Exclusive: Donald Trump Says Political Violence ‘Depends’ on ‘Fairness’ of 2024 Election
In 1868, conservatives backed Horatio Seymour against Ulysses S. Grant, in a campaign built on the promise of disenfranchising Black Americans, and their rhetoric sparked widespread violence. The Ku Klux Klan launched murderous campaigns across the South…
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