The Treason of the Robert E. Lee:
Grant Protects Lee From Treason Trial April 26, 2016 Mathew W. Lively Blog Posts, Grant, Ulysses S., Lee, Robert E. 0
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant Following the end of Civil War hostilities in 1865, there were many in the North who wanted the civil and military officials of the Confederacy to stand trial for treason. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln further flamed the desire of many to take vengeance upon the South and its leaders, particularly Gen. Robert E. Lee. The New York Times was a leading proponent for treason charges against Lee, writing in a June 4, 1865 editorial: “He has ‘levied war against the United States’ more strenuously than any other man in the land, and thereby has been specially guilty of the crime of treason, as defined in the Constitution of the United States,” and “whether Gen. Lee should be hung or not, is a minor question.”
President Andrew Johnson was another advocate of harsh treatment for Lee and his generals, but he was soon to learn his views were in direct contrast to those of the North’s war hero, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The Appomattox terms of surrender offered and signed by Grant included the clause “…each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by United States Authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.” Grant had wanted peace and included this line to ensure there would be no future reprisals against the Confederates. But on June 7, 1865, U.S. District Judge John C. Underwood in Norfolk, Virginia, handed down treason indictments against Lee, James Longstreet, Jubal Early, and others stating the terms of parole agreed upon with Lee were “a mere military arrangement, and can have no influence upon civil rights or the status of the persons interested.” When Lee, who was preparing to apply for amnesty, became aware of the indictments, he wrote Grant asking if the Appomattox terms were still in effect. After reading Lee’s letter, Grant forwarded his own views to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on June 16, 1865: In my opinion the officers and men paroled at Appomattox Court-House, and since, upon the same terms given to Lee, cannot be tried for treason so long as they observe the terms of their parole. This is my understanding. Good faith, as well as true policy, dictates that we should observe the conditions of that convention. Bad faith on the part of the Government, or a construction of that convention subjecting the officers to trial for treason, would produce a feeling of insecurity in the minds of all the paroled officers and men. If so disposed they might even regard such an infraction of terms by the Government as an entire release from all obligations on their part. I will state further that the terms granted by me met with the hearty approval of the President at the time, and of the country generally. The action of Judge Underwood, in Norfolk, has already had an injurious effect, and I would ask that he be ordered to quash all indictments found against paroled prisoners of war, and to desist from further prosecution of them.
President Andrew Johnson Grant also visited personally with President Johnson to discuss the situation, but was dismayed to find that Johnson fully intended to let the proceedings continue. Grant insisted the Appomattox terms be honored. Johnson asked when the men could be tried. “Never,” Grant responded, “unless they violate their paroles.” Andrew Johnson, however, was just as stubborn as Grant and told the general he wouldn’t interfere with the prosecution. Grant too refused to back down, telling the President he would resign his commission if the surrender terms were not honored. Johnson realized he had lost; the public would never support him over the far-more popular Grant. Word was sent to the U.S. District Attorney in Norfolk to drop the proceedings. Grant then responded to Lee’s letter. Copying his comments to Stanton in the reply, he wrote on June 20, 1865: “This opinion, I am informed, is substantially the same as that entertained by the Government.” Lee was safe from trial, but Grant never told him how far he had gone to protect him.
Suggested reading: Badeau, Adam. Grant in Peace. From Appomattox to Mount McGregor. Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton & Company, 1887. Simon, John Y., ed. The Papers of U.S. Grant. Vol. 15. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, DC, 1880-1901), Series 1, vol. 46, pt. 3, 1275, 1287.
https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/grant-protects-lee-from-treason-trial/
The Trial That Didn’t Happen ALLEN C. GUELZO 10 MIN READ Lee and Grant in Appomattox
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
April 13, 2018 at 1:10 AM
Did Robert E. Lee commit treason?
Treason is defined by the Constitution in Article 3, section three, as consisting in levying War against the United States or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. Stark as that prescription is, fewer than 30 people have been tried for treason by the federal courts. Two of these—Philip Wigle and John Mitchell—were convicted for their role in the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion but then pardoned by President George Washington. Aaron Burr was tried for treason after a failed conspiracy to set up his own political empire in the Mississippi Valley, but he eluded conviction because, as Chief Justice John Marshall reasoned, “war must actually be levied against the United States.” Burr’s plot hadn’t become more than a plot, and since “conspiracy [to levy war] is not treason,” Burr walked free.
AD 00:26 / 00:30 But surely the oddest treason trial is one which never took place, that of Robert E. Lee. Surely, if anyone could be said to have levied war against the United States, it must have been the man who for four years inflicted one embarrassing defeat after another on United States troops during the Civil War and almost single-handedly kept the Southern Confederacy alive until its final expiry in 1865. What aggravates Lee’s offense is his pre-war career of over 30 years as a U.S. Army officer and the offer of command of the U.S. Army made to him at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, which he refused. “What has General Robert Lee done to deserve mercy or forbearance from the people and the authorities of the North?” the Boston Daily Advertiser shrilly demanded after Lee surrendered his dwindling, scarecrow band of rebels at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Lee was “the bloodiest and guiltiest traitor in all the South,” and Congressman George Julian foamed at the outrage of allowing “old General Lee” to roam “up and down the hills and valleys of Virginia,” free and unarrested. But roam he did, because when Lee surrendered, he secured from Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant a “solemn parole of honor” that protected Lee and his army “from molestation so long as they conformed to its condition.” Grant had been eager to avoid any further bloodbaths, and granting the paroles was, by his estimate, the easiest way to induce Lee’s surrender.
AD 00:26 / 00:30 That was until five days later, when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre. At once, the new president, Andrew Johnson, and his attorney general, James Speed, decided that Grant “had no authority” to offer anything like a pardon to Lee. The Appomattox paroles were “a mere military arrangement and can have no influence upon civil rights or the status of the persons interested,” in the words of John C. Underwood. And on June 2, Underwood, the sole functioning federal district judge in Virginia, impaneled a grand jury in Norfolk (which had been occupied by Union forces since 1862) that issued an indictment for treason involving Lee, his two sons (both Confederate generals), and 34 other high-ranking Confederates. Underwood, a Unionist Virginian who had suffered personally at Confederate hands, was in deadly earnest: Lee “did maliciously and traitorously . . . ordain and carry on war against the United States of America.” * * *
AD 00:25 / 00:30 Lee took Underwood’s threat just as seriously. On June 13, he appealed to Grant, and Grant in turn wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to insist that “the officers and men paroled at Appomattox C.H. . . . cannot be tried for treason so long as they observe the terms of their parole.” But neither Stanton nor Johnson were moved, and so Grant confronted Johnson directly in a cabinet meeting. “Mr. Johnson spoke of Lee and wanted to know why any military commander had a right to protect an arch-traitor from the laws.”
Grant, who “was angry at this,” heatedly explained to Johnson that he, as president, “might do as he pleased about civil rights, confiscation of property, and so on . . . but a general commanding troops has certain responsibilities and duties and power, which are supreme.” That included a parole carrying immunity from prosecution. Besides, if he had not given such a parole, “Lee would never have surrendered, and we should have lost many lives in destroying him.” And then came the stinger: “I should have resigned the command of the army rather than have carried out any order directing me to arrest Lee or any of his commanders who obeyed the laws.” Grant was not the only one unlikely to cooperate with Johnson and Underwood. Abraham Lincoln had installed his former Treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase, as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1864, partly to remove him as a rival for the presidency and partly to ensure that the administration’s emancipation policies during the war would get a friendly hearing from a devout antislavery man like Chase if challenges erupted after the war ended. Chase, however, had agendas of his own. If he could not usurp Lincoln as president, he could certainly magnify his office as chief justice. The Supreme Court and the federal judiciary as a whole had played a muted role in the conduct of the war, despite their unhappiness with Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the use of military commissions to try civilians. As soon as the shooting stopped, Chase and the High Court moved to reassert themselves, and the most dramatic example of that would come in the case of Ex parte Milligan, which struck down the legitimacy of the military commissions. Most Popular
Not that this persuaded Andrew Johnson or Congress to suspend the use of military commissions—but it meant that Chase would refuse to participate in his auxiliary role as a federal circuit judge so long as military commissions were operating anywhere within a given district. “While military authority was supreme in the South,” Chase explained, “no Justice of the Supreme Court could properly hold a Court there.” And by tradition, Chase’s circuit responsibilities as chief justice embraced Virginia and North Carolina. Without Chase’s participation in a capital case, Judge Underwood would have to try Lee’s treason case by himself, and that would produce a verdict of, at best, dubious legality. As it was, Chase did not have a particularly high opinion of Underwood’s competence as a judge. “The ‘Anxious’ man,” Chase remarked drily, “can have a trial before Judge Underwood” any time he wants. But “the Court will be a quasi-military court,” and Chase would have nothing to do with it. * * * Whether Lee or Underwood realized it, there were also some serious constitutional and legal obstacles in the path of a conviction—or even a trial—for treason. For one thing, the Constitution’s definition of treason is really a very narrow one, and much would dangle on the exact meaning of “levying war.”
Abraham Lincoln had insisted from the beginning that since war is a condition that exists only between two sovereign nations, and since the Confederacy was in his view only an insurrection, no actual war legally existed between the North and the South. (The United States, for instance, never declared war against the Confederacy.) So it was not quite clear that Lee could be, by Lincoln’s definition, guilty of levying war. Lee himself was quite capable of playing on other Constitutional ambiguities, especially concerning citizenship. Nowhere in the Constitution, as it was written in 1787, is the concept of citizenship actually defined. In the five places where it refers to citizenship, it speaks of citizens of the states and citizens of the United States. But no effort to sort out the relationship between the two is apparent, leaving the strange sense that Americans possessed a kind of dual citizenship, in their “native State” (as Lee called it) and in the Union. Lee, curiously, had never put much faith in Southern appeals to state sovereignty to justify secession from the Union. But the obligations he owed Virginia as a citizen were another matter. In “my view,” Lee reasoned, “the action of the State, in withdrawing itself from the government of the United States,” required its citizens to act with it. Whether that withdrawal was right or wrong was irrelevant. “The act of Virginia, in withdrawing herself from the United States, carried me along as a citizen of Virginia” because “her laws and her acts were binding on me.” In the event, Lee conceded, the Civil War had exploded that theory by sheer force, and the 14th Amendment would explode it by law in 1868. But in 1861, Lee added, neither he nor any other individual Confederate could be called a traitor for having followed their state. “The State was responsible for the act, not the individual.” Finally, there was a practical consideration that not even Judge Underwood could ignore. The Constitution requires that the Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed, and the Sixth Amendment adds that such a trial must take place in the district wherein the crime shall have been committed. Hence, any trial of Lee would have to take place in Virginia. While it had not been difficult to create a cooperative grand jury in Norfolk, the wording of the Sixth Amendment seemed to require that such a trial take place in Richmond, and there it would be a much more monumental task to find a civilian petit jury which would vote to convict Robert E. Lee. Underwood certainly understood that this would be one of his most formidable obstacles. “Unless it is what might be called a packed jury,” Underwood complained, then, instead of convicting Lee, “ten or eleven out of the twelve on any jury, I think, would say that Lee was almost equal to Washington, and was the noblest man in the State.” * * * On June 12, 1865, Judge Underwood was called to Washington for consultations, which effectively sent the Lee indictment to the back burner. The Johnson administration’s vengeful eye turned instead to Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who had no parole umbrella to protect him and whom Underwood’s grand jury indicted for treason on May 8, 1866. Once again, however, Chief Justice Chase balked while federal military commissions were still operating in Virginia, and no trial date was set until November 1867.
By that time, Chase and Andrew Johnson were both becoming involved in what would mushroom into Johnson’s impeachment trial. Johnson survived impeachment, but only barely, and almost as a gesture of contempt for his tormentors in Congress, he issued “a full pardon and amnesty for the offense of treason” to “all and to every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion” on Christmas Day, 1868. Still, none of this quite answers the original question: Did Robert E. Lee commit treason? Half a century after Appomattox, Union veterans were still denouncing Lee for “his dishonorable desertion to the enemies of his country.” When Virginia proposed placing a bronze statue of Lee in the Capitol, unreconciled Northern veterans demanded, “How long would Congress tolerate a statue of [Benedict] Arnold in that Hall? Not a single day; and yet far better Benedict Arnold than Robert E. Lee.” One has to say, purely on the merits, that Lee did indeed commit treason, if levying war against the United States and giving aid and comfort to its enemies are to have any meaning. But treason de facto does not always become treason de jure. The distance between the two can be measured by Lee’s own carefully honed distinction: Until the Civil War settled matters, there was a plausible vagueness in the Constitution about the loyalty owed by citizens of states and the Union. So long as it could be argued that Lee was functioning within the latitude of that vagueness, it would be extraordinarily difficult to persuade a civilian jury that he had committed treason de jure. Such a jury was never called into being, and without a trial by his peers, not even the most acute of historical observers is really free to pass judgment on the crime or the loyalty of Robert E. Lee. Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce professor of the Civil War era at Gettysburg College. This essay is adapted from an address at Washington and Lee University earlier this year.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/allen-c-guelzo/the-trial-that-didnt-happen
What did the newly freed and others face after the war?
It was a mixed pot, Some built communities, some found community almost none found equality.
LEAVE OR DIE:
"Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions. They drove thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.
In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census.
The expulsions were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South. But they remain largely unacknowledged in standard histories of America.
While it is impossible to say exactly how many expulsions took place, computer analysis and years of research conducted by the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspapers, which owns the American-Statesman, reveal that they occurred on a scale that has never been fully documented or understood."
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/leave-or-die-americas-hidden-history-racial-expuls/nWR7G/
It was a mixed pot, Some built communities, some found community almost none found equality.
LEAVE OR DIE:
"Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions. They drove thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white.
In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census.
The expulsions were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South. But they remain largely unacknowledged in standard histories of America.
While it is impossible to say exactly how many expulsions took place, computer analysis and years of research conducted by the Washington Bureau of Cox Newspapers, which owns the American-Statesman, reveal that they occurred on a scale that has never been fully documented or understood."
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/leave-or-die-americas-hidden-history-racial-expuls/nWR7G/
Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
" The most famous case of racial cleansing, Rosewood, Florida In 1923, was no anomaly, as Jaspin notes 260 such towns. In fact, such expulsions were so common that newspaper accounts recorded them. Shame, an eagerness to forget, and reluctance to deal with reparations and compensation have allowed the expulsions to lapse into the past. Expulsions ranged from those centered on violence--lynchings and race riots--to threats and ultimatums that did not result in actual violence. "
http://www.amazon.com/Buried-Bitter-Waters-History-Cleansing/dp/0465036368/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1438212941&sr=8-2
" The most famous case of racial cleansing, Rosewood, Florida In 1923, was no anomaly, as Jaspin notes 260 such towns. In fact, such expulsions were so common that newspaper accounts recorded them. Shame, an eagerness to forget, and reluctance to deal with reparations and compensation have allowed the expulsions to lapse into the past. Expulsions ranged from those centered on violence--lynchings and race riots--to threats and ultimatums that did not result in actual violence. "
http://www.amazon.com/Buried-Bitter-Waters-History-Cleansing/dp/0465036368/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1438212941&sr=8-2
Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement
The dramatic and first popular account of one of the deadliest racial confrontations in the 20th century--in East St. Louis in the summer of 1917--which paved the way for the civil rights movement.
In the 1910s, half a million African Americans moved from the impoverished rural South to booming industrial cities of the North in search of jobs and freedom from Jim Crow laws. But Northern whites responded with rage, attacking blacks in the streets and laying waste to black neighborhoods in a horrific series of deadly race riots that broke out in dozens of cities across the nation, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Tulsa, Houston, and Washington, D.C. In East St. Louis, Illinois, corrupt city officials and industrialists had openly courted Southern blacks, luring them North to replace striking white laborers. This tinderbox erupted on July 2, 1917 into what would become one of the bloodiest American riots of the World War era. Its impact was enormous. "There has never been a time when the riot was not alive in the oral tradition," remarks Professor Eugene Redmond. Indeed, prominent blacks like W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Josephine Baker were forever influenced by it.
Celebrated St. Louis journalist Harper Barnes has written the first full account of this dramatic turning point in American history, decisively placing it in the continuum of racial tensions flowing from Reconstruction and as a catalyst of civil rights action in the decades to come. Drawing from accounts and sources never before utilized, Harper Barnes has crafted a compelling and definitive story that enshrines the riot as an historical rallying cry for all who deplore racial violence.
_http://www.amazon.com/Never-Been-Time-Sparked-Movement/dp/0802715753/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SQPQJ4DZ0FZ7SCT1PY8
The dramatic and first popular account of one of the deadliest racial confrontations in the 20th century--in East St. Louis in the summer of 1917--which paved the way for the civil rights movement.
In the 1910s, half a million African Americans moved from the impoverished rural South to booming industrial cities of the North in search of jobs and freedom from Jim Crow laws. But Northern whites responded with rage, attacking blacks in the streets and laying waste to black neighborhoods in a horrific series of deadly race riots that broke out in dozens of cities across the nation, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Tulsa, Houston, and Washington, D.C. In East St. Louis, Illinois, corrupt city officials and industrialists had openly courted Southern blacks, luring them North to replace striking white laborers. This tinderbox erupted on July 2, 1917 into what would become one of the bloodiest American riots of the World War era. Its impact was enormous. "There has never been a time when the riot was not alive in the oral tradition," remarks Professor Eugene Redmond. Indeed, prominent blacks like W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Josephine Baker were forever influenced by it.
Celebrated St. Louis journalist Harper Barnes has written the first full account of this dramatic turning point in American history, decisively placing it in the continuum of racial tensions flowing from Reconstruction and as a catalyst of civil rights action in the decades to come. Drawing from accounts and sources never before utilized, Harper Barnes has crafted a compelling and definitive story that enshrines the riot as an historical rallying cry for all who deplore racial violence.
_http://www.amazon.com/Never-Been-Time-Sparked-Movement/dp/0802715753/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SQPQJ4DZ0FZ7SCT1PY8
The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble.
And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past.
With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Burning-Massacre-Destruction-Tulsa/dp/0312272839/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SQPQJ4DZ0FZ7SCT1PY8
On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. 34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble.
And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past.
With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Burning-Massacre-Destruction-Tulsa/dp/0312272839/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1SQPQJ4DZ0FZ7SCT1PY8
The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas
In late July 1910, a shocking number of African Americans in Texas were slaughtered by white mobs in the Slocum area of Anderson County and the Percilla-Augusta region of neighboring Houston County. The number of dead surpassed the casualties of the Rosewood Massacre in Florida and rivaled those of the Tulsa Riots in Oklahoma, but the incident--one of the largest mass murders of blacks in American history--is now largely forgotten. Investigate the facts behind this harrowing act of genocide in E.R. Bills's compelling inquiry into the Slocum Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/The-1910-Slocum-Massacre-Genocide/dp/1626193525/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1P57623JXQREF257RBX7
In late July 1910, a shocking number of African Americans in Texas were slaughtered by white mobs in the Slocum area of Anderson County and the Percilla-Augusta region of neighboring Houston County. The number of dead surpassed the casualties of the Rosewood Massacre in Florida and rivaled those of the Tulsa Riots in Oklahoma, but the incident--one of the largest mass murders of blacks in American history--is now largely forgotten. Investigate the facts behind this harrowing act of genocide in E.R. Bills's compelling inquiry into the Slocum Massacre.
http://www.amazon.com/The-1910-Slocum-Massacre-Genocide/dp/1626193525/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1P57623JXQREF257RBX7
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
Bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States.
In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestsellerLies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations.
Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.
http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1P57623JXQREF257RBX7
What follows is from https://www.blackpast.org/special-features/racial-violence-united-states-1660/
RACIAL VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1660
Regrettably racial violence has been a distinct part of American history since 1660. While that violence has impacted almost every ethnic and racial group in the United States, it has had a particularly horrific effect on African American life. Listed below are some of the major incidents of racial violence profiled on BlackPast.org. They range from revolts of the enslaved to more recent urban uprisings such as the Rodney King Riot in Los Angeles in 1992. This page does not cover violence affecting a single individual such as lynchings or police shootings. Please look for those incidents elsewhere on the website. We are constantly updating this list but if you think other incidents should be included please send their names and a brief description to [email protected]. We especially invite you to write entries for this page.
Revolts of the Enslaved:New York City Slave Uprising, 1712
The Stono Rebellion, 1739
New York City Slave Conspiracy, 1741
Gabriel Prosser Revolt, 1800
Igbo Landing Mass Suicide, 1803
Andry’s Rebellion, 1811
Denmark Vesey Conspiracy, 1822
Nat Turner Revolt, 1831
Amistad Mutiny, 1839
Creole Case, 1841
Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation, 1842
Antebellum Urban ViolenceCincinnati Riots, 1829
Anti-Abolition Riots, 1834
Cincinnati Race Riots, 1836
The Pennsylvania Hall Fire, 1838
Christina (Pennsylvania) Riot, 1851
Civil War, Reconstruction, and Post-Reconstruction Era ViolenceDetroit Race Riot, 1863
New York City Draft Riots, 1863
Memphis Riot, 1866
New Orleans Massacre, 1866
Pulaski Race Riot, 1868
Camilla Massacre, 1868
Opelousas Massacre, 1868
The Meridian Race Riot, 1871
Chicot County Race War, 1871
The Colfax Massacre, 1873
Clinton (Mississippi) Riot, 1875
Hamburg Massacre, 1876
Carroll County Courthouse Massacre, 1886
Thibodaux Massacre, 1887
New Orleans Dockworkers’ Riot, 1894-1895
Virden, Illinois Race Riot, 1898
Wilmington Race Riot, 1898
Newburg, New York Race Riot, 1899
Race Riots, 1900-1960Robert Charles Riot (New Orleans), 1900
New York City Race Riot, 1900
Atlanta Race Riot, 1906
Springfield, Illinois Race Riot, 1908
The Slocum Massacre, 1910
East St. Louis Race Riot, 1917
Chester, Pennsylvania Race Riot, 1917
Houston Mutiny and Race Riot, 1917
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Race Riot, 1918
Charleston (South Carolina) Riot, 1919
Longview Race Riot, 1919
Washington, D.C. Riot, 1919
Chicago Race Riot, 1919
Knoxville Race Riot, 1919
Elaine, Arkansas Riot, 1919
Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921
Rosewood Massacre, 1923
Harlem Race Riot, 1935
Beaumont Race Riot, 1943
Detroit Race Riot, 1943
Columbia Race Riot, 1946
Peekskill Riot, 1949
Urban Uprisings, 1960-2000Cambridge, Maryland Riot, 1963
The Harlem Race Riot, 1964
Rochester Rebellion, 1964
Jersey City Uprising, 1964
Paterson, New Jersey Uprising, 1964
Elizabeth, New Jersey Uprising, 1964
Chicago (Dixmoor) Riots, 1964
Philadelphia Race Riot, 1964
Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles), 1965
Cleveland’s Hough Riots, 1966
Chicago, Illinois Uprising, 1966
The Dayton, Ohio Uprising, 1966
Hunter’s Point, San Francisco Uprising, 1966
The Nashville Race Riot, 1967
Tampa Bay Race Riot, 1967
Newark Race Riot, 1967
Plainfield, New Jersey Riot, 1967
Detroit Race Riot, 1967
Flint, Michigan Riot, 1967
Tucson Race Riot, 1967
Grand Rapids, Michigan Uprising, 1967
The King Assassination Riots, 1968
Hartford, Connecticut Riot, 1969
Asbury Park Race Riot, 1970
Camden, New Jersey Riots, 1969 and 1971
Miami (Liberty City) Riot, 1980
Crown Heights (Brooklyn) New York Riot, 1991
Rodney King Riot, 1992
West Las Vegas Riot, 1992
St. Petersburg, Florida Riot, 1996
College Campus ViolenceUniversity of Georgia Desegregation Riot, 1961
Ole Miss Riot, 1962
Houston (Texas Southern University) Riot, 1967
Orangeburg Massacre, 1968
Jackson State Killings, 1970
21st Century Racial ViolenceCincinnati Riot, 2001
Oscar Grant Oakland Protests, 2009-2011
Ferguson Riot and Ferguson Unrest, 2014-2015
Baltimore Protests and Riots, 2015
Charleston Church Massacre, 2015
Milwaukee Riot, 2016
Charlotte Riot, 2016
Bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States.
In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestsellerLies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations.
Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.
http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1P57623JXQREF257RBX7
What follows is from https://www.blackpast.org/special-features/racial-violence-united-states-1660/
RACIAL VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1660
Regrettably racial violence has been a distinct part of American history since 1660. While that violence has impacted almost every ethnic and racial group in the United States, it has had a particularly horrific effect on African American life. Listed below are some of the major incidents of racial violence profiled on BlackPast.org. They range from revolts of the enslaved to more recent urban uprisings such as the Rodney King Riot in Los Angeles in 1992. This page does not cover violence affecting a single individual such as lynchings or police shootings. Please look for those incidents elsewhere on the website. We are constantly updating this list but if you think other incidents should be included please send their names and a brief description to [email protected]. We especially invite you to write entries for this page.
Revolts of the Enslaved:New York City Slave Uprising, 1712
The Stono Rebellion, 1739
New York City Slave Conspiracy, 1741
Gabriel Prosser Revolt, 1800
Igbo Landing Mass Suicide, 1803
Andry’s Rebellion, 1811
Denmark Vesey Conspiracy, 1822
Nat Turner Revolt, 1831
Amistad Mutiny, 1839
Creole Case, 1841
Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation, 1842
Antebellum Urban ViolenceCincinnati Riots, 1829
Anti-Abolition Riots, 1834
Cincinnati Race Riots, 1836
The Pennsylvania Hall Fire, 1838
Christina (Pennsylvania) Riot, 1851
Civil War, Reconstruction, and Post-Reconstruction Era ViolenceDetroit Race Riot, 1863
New York City Draft Riots, 1863
Memphis Riot, 1866
New Orleans Massacre, 1866
Pulaski Race Riot, 1868
Camilla Massacre, 1868
Opelousas Massacre, 1868
The Meridian Race Riot, 1871
Chicot County Race War, 1871
The Colfax Massacre, 1873
Clinton (Mississippi) Riot, 1875
Hamburg Massacre, 1876
Carroll County Courthouse Massacre, 1886
Thibodaux Massacre, 1887
New Orleans Dockworkers’ Riot, 1894-1895
Virden, Illinois Race Riot, 1898
Wilmington Race Riot, 1898
Newburg, New York Race Riot, 1899
Race Riots, 1900-1960Robert Charles Riot (New Orleans), 1900
New York City Race Riot, 1900
Atlanta Race Riot, 1906
Springfield, Illinois Race Riot, 1908
The Slocum Massacre, 1910
East St. Louis Race Riot, 1917
Chester, Pennsylvania Race Riot, 1917
Houston Mutiny and Race Riot, 1917
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Race Riot, 1918
Charleston (South Carolina) Riot, 1919
Longview Race Riot, 1919
Washington, D.C. Riot, 1919
Chicago Race Riot, 1919
Knoxville Race Riot, 1919
Elaine, Arkansas Riot, 1919
Tulsa Race Massacre, 1921
Rosewood Massacre, 1923
Harlem Race Riot, 1935
Beaumont Race Riot, 1943
Detroit Race Riot, 1943
Columbia Race Riot, 1946
Peekskill Riot, 1949
Urban Uprisings, 1960-2000Cambridge, Maryland Riot, 1963
The Harlem Race Riot, 1964
Rochester Rebellion, 1964
Jersey City Uprising, 1964
Paterson, New Jersey Uprising, 1964
Elizabeth, New Jersey Uprising, 1964
Chicago (Dixmoor) Riots, 1964
Philadelphia Race Riot, 1964
Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles), 1965
Cleveland’s Hough Riots, 1966
Chicago, Illinois Uprising, 1966
The Dayton, Ohio Uprising, 1966
Hunter’s Point, San Francisco Uprising, 1966
The Nashville Race Riot, 1967
Tampa Bay Race Riot, 1967
Newark Race Riot, 1967
Plainfield, New Jersey Riot, 1967
Detroit Race Riot, 1967
Flint, Michigan Riot, 1967
Tucson Race Riot, 1967
Grand Rapids, Michigan Uprising, 1967
The King Assassination Riots, 1968
Hartford, Connecticut Riot, 1969
Asbury Park Race Riot, 1970
Camden, New Jersey Riots, 1969 and 1971
Miami (Liberty City) Riot, 1980
Crown Heights (Brooklyn) New York Riot, 1991
Rodney King Riot, 1992
West Las Vegas Riot, 1992
St. Petersburg, Florida Riot, 1996
College Campus ViolenceUniversity of Georgia Desegregation Riot, 1961
Ole Miss Riot, 1962
Houston (Texas Southern University) Riot, 1967
Orangeburg Massacre, 1968
Jackson State Killings, 1970
21st Century Racial ViolenceCincinnati Riot, 2001
Oscar Grant Oakland Protests, 2009-2011
Ferguson Riot and Ferguson Unrest, 2014-2015
Baltimore Protests and Riots, 2015
Charleston Church Massacre, 2015
Milwaukee Riot, 2016
Charlotte Riot, 2016
WHERE ARE WE TODAY?
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