In 1935 W.E.B. Du Bois wrote a history of the effort to create a revolutionary society in the USA. It was not after the American War of Independence, when the US Constitution was drafted or the canals built; it was after the Civil War, when a former slave-owning society had its governmental structure rebuilt. The period of Reconstruction was brief; between 1865 and 1868, the nation was under the "Black Codes," as well as terrorism against African Americans from white supremacist groups.¹ After 1868 congress and the presidency shifted to control by Radical Republicans, and federal troops were used to restore the rule of law in the former CSA. At the same time, the 14th and 15th Amendments were passed, enfranchising African Americans and establishing the principle of equal protection of the laws. This lasted to 1876, the other election (besides 2000) where a president won the White House with fewer popular votes than his opponent. After '76, Reconstruction ended and a 20-year period of counterrevolution began.

This era was, in the main, a protracted depression for the developed world. The world was swept by "libertarian" dogma and the gold-standard. By 1896, there was almost nothing remaining of the revolution of 1865-68, nothing visible on the ground. The losers in 1865 were able to write the history of reconstruction, imposing their self-serving histories and their slanders of African Americans on the nation as a condition for peace. The truth is that the bigots won through terrorism, and this triumph for terror has been a national case of congenital syphillus. It eats at our civil institutions, making them disreputable; it eats at our image of reality, so that we live in delusion; and it pollutes our civil relations, so that fellow citizens bear grievances against each other without hope of redress.

At this point, it is customary to say, "This must end," or "The time has come to change this beyond recognition." This, I will not do. The time has come, gone, come again, and gone again many times. We the people may, for all I know, be like the House of Atreides, doomed to an endless Orestia. A fellow I know about has written copiously on the evils of the agrarian revolution; he thinks the advent of farming has been an unmitigated horror, since billions of humans have suffered stuff since it was developed, whereas if it had never been invented, then only a few tens of millions would have suffered any bad things. Obviously, he thinks agriculture should be abolished, even though such an event would be a logical absurdity. Remarks like "this should end" are only slightly less absurd.

No, this is a site for inquiry, not polemics. Over the next few posts, I hope to examine in greater detail what we can conclude from Du Bois' insights on the US Civil War.