October 19, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Our ROGUE CONGRESS,
Impeachment, and Movement Conservatives: Some History from the Reconstruction
Friends,
In the
midst of the present grotesque attempt by the administrative state—the Deep
State managerial class—to overthrow a president and negate the results of the
2016 elections, some writers and commentators have reached back into American
history for analogous precedents. Indeed, there have been instances when one
branch of the American government attempted to overawe, subvert, and even
displace another branch, and essentially to destroy the precarious balance of
powers established in the Constitution.
Certainly,
the present “silent coup,” with all its foul and insidious zealotry, its
prevarication and verifiable madness, is unique and unparalleled in many ways.
In particular, there is an incredible fanaticism in the present effort to
unseat a duly elected president not seen in the United States for well over at
least a century, to, as it were, “put the [Trump-inspired] genie that threatens
the managerial elites back in the lamp.” Not even during the Clinton
impeachment hearings, nor the Watergate crisis—not during the raucous debates
over the Vietnam War nor the potential for revolution during the Great
Depression—have we witnessed the specter of perhaps one-third, maybe more, of
our population wallowing in the real, palpable and often violent lunacy that we
see currently.
This
state of affairs did not simply spring up like the Greek goddess Athena, from “Zeus’s head, full-grown and
clothed in armor.” Those we
behold today arrayed against us, those we confront who call themselves variously
“progressivists,” “democratic socialists,” “anti-racists,” and so forth, have
been carefully groomed and incubated over decades by an increasingly noxious
and pervasive environment. They are the products of an educational system which
is rotten through-and-through (especially in higher education), they experience
conditioning daily from large and constant doses of media and entertainment
which is ideologically driven and geared
to support the template, and they live in a poisonous society which confirms
and ratifies the views and ideas that have been instilled in them.
At the base
of this ongoing process is the rampant and triumphant “Idea of Progress” and
the identification by the Progressivists with it. It is they, and in particular
their academic minions and educators, who have made their causes synonymous with
an inevitable and ineluctable “progress.” Anyone opposing their designs and
programs is labeled anti-progressive, reactionary, bigoted, and worse. Thus,
for the history of the United States (and even before its establishment) there
has been a constant struggle between the “forces of reaction” (read here: “Southern
slave holding,” “anti-feminism,” “racism,” “white supremacism,” “male domination,”
“anti-gay rights,” and so on) who have stood in the way of inevitable “Progress,”
and those “on the side of history” who represent enlightenment and freedom.
The
foundation of this never-ending Progressivist movement, undergirding it is the essential
magic talisman: egalitarianism. For that, progressivists cry in loud voice and
demand that the “oppressed” receive complete and full “equality.”
Far too
many times so-called conservatives, and certainly “Movement Conservatives,” buy
into this template and join this narrative as well, and by accepting its fundamental
premises and parameters, they inevitably lose any debate or discussion, and
remain, as the Seventeenth Century English author Sir Thomas Browne wrote, “prisoners
of the errors to which they proclaim their opposition.”
This is
particularly true of those denominated “Neoconservatives,” whose genealogy draws
heavily from their intellectual history and foundations over on the
progressivist Left. During the late 1950s, 1960s and into the 1980s the
Neocons, largely but certainly not entirely consisting of socialist and Marxist
Jewish intellectuals centered around New York and a few other large Eastern
cities, began moving “right.” In part, although certainly not exclusively, it
was an opposition to Stalinism and Soviet Communism (and perceived persecution
of Russian Jews) that steered important thinkers like former socialists Norman
Podhoretz and Irving Kristol into the ranks of the Conservative movement—and their
votaries into the Republican Party. But though they brought their fierce and at
times expert critique of Communism with them, they did not relinquish their philosophical
commitment to the same “Idea of Progress” which, at base, remained at the heart
of their belief system and praxis.
Accordingly,
American history had to be re-written and re-interpreted ex post facto to be consistent with the narrative of a struggle
between the “reactionaries” and those epigones of always-expanding equality and
democracy (including in foreign policy). And in so doing, the Necons implicitly
accepted the terms of debate, in many cases the very same terminology, as their
supposed opponents over on the further Left.
Unlike
many older conservative writers (e.g. the late Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver)
now the Union cause, 1861-1865, and Abraham Lincoln were incorporated as Icons
in the new Pantheon of (revised) American Conservatism. The Confederacy—John C.
Calhoun (who had been featured in Kirk’s monumental Conservative Mind as a pivotal conservative thinker)—John Randolph
of Roanoke—the superb Southern Agrarian writers—and the brilliant Mel Bradford
were exiled, expelled from the “movement.” Just as with the further Left, the
Neocons embraced the “Idea of Progress” template and an egalitarian narrative
in which there was no room for dissent…even if the entire American founding had
to be “re-interpreted” to somehow make it agree with their views.
Thus, the
specter of Bush adviser Karl Rove declaring that his favorite historian of the
War Between the States and slavery is the Communist historian Eric Foner.
Although they may disagree vociferously over how much change or what kind of
change is needed, or who should be president or what laws should be enacted,
their agreement historically, on the reading of American history, should be
extremely troubling—and revealing—for conservatives.
Is it
likely that such leaders of the current “Conservative Movement” can mount a
vigorous defense of President Trump? Indeed, where are the Republican opponents
of the current farce parading before us: secret Congressional “star chamber”
hearings, brazen connivance by the media (including at times Fox News), faked
stories, manipulated headlines, items taken out of context….? Will they—can they—stand
up to the enemies of the Constitution, the Inside-the-Beltway Establishment to
which far too many of them belong?
That
remains to be seen.
*********
One-hundred
and fifty plus years ago there was another rogue Congress. And author Philip
Leigh has written about it. I think his comments and perhaps analogies may be
useful as we watch the unfolding coup in Washington.
When Congress Trampled the
Presidency and the Supreme Court
The Reconstruction era was rife with congressional abuses. Let’s
not let it happen again.
Two years after the Civil War ended in 1865, a Republican
Congress gained a veto-proof majority in both chambers. They almost immediately
began trimming the powers of the executive and judicial branches. First, they
replaced President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan with their own. In
order to restrict his ability to interfere, they passed a number of bills over
his veto. Although targeted at Johnson, the acts also weakened future
presidents. Second, they defied the Supreme Court and manipulated its
membership in order to limit judicial intervention with congressional
Reconstruction.
From December
1863 to April 1865, Reconstruction
proceeded under President Lincoln’s guidance. After he died, President Johnson
attempted to follow in Lincoln’s footsteps. Neither Lincoln nor Johnson
required that the former Confederate states adopt black suffrage. While both
had hoped that blacks who were “highly intelligent” or Union veterans might be
enfranchised, none were. Nonetheless, on the day he died Lincoln said, “We
cannot undertake to run state governments in
all the Southern states. Their people must do that — though at first I reckon
some of them may at first do it badly.”
Although some historians assume
that the congressional Reconstruction that began in March 1867 was a noble
attempt to promote racial equality, most of the evidence suggests it was
designed to ensure that the Republican Party retained control of the federal
government. When the Civil War ended, the party was barely 10 years old. It
might have been strangled in its cradle if the re-admittance of Southern states
failed to be managed in a way that would prevent Southerners from allying with
Northern Democrats to regain control of the federal government.
Consequently, Republicans settled
on two goals. First was mandatory black suffrage in all former Confederate
states. Party members reasoned that the new, inexperienced voters could be
manipulated to consistently support Republican interests. Second was denying
political power to the Southern whites most likely to oppose Republicans. A
combination of the two factors enabled the infant GOP to form carpetbag puppet
regimes in the Southern states. Initially obtained through the 1867 Reconstruction
Acts, the goals were incorporated into
the Constitution through the 14th and 15th Amendments. Only by means of the
carpetbag regimes did the amendments cross the required 75 percent-of-states
ratification threshold.
Although Congress limited
President Johnson’s authority in various ways, the best-known example was the
1867 Tenure of Office
Act, which restricted his ability to
dismiss presidentially appointed executive officers. Specifically, it
stipulated that if such appointees had been subject to the advice and consent
of the Senate upon appointment, then the president could not dismiss them
without Senate approval. The purpose was to keep War Secretary Edwin Stanton in
the cabinet as a Republican spy. Johnson thought the act was unconstitutional,
which the Supreme Court later confirmed in 1926. Intending to test it before
the contemporary Supreme Court, however, Johnson dismissed Stanton while the
Senate was out of session. He temporarily replaced Stanton with Gen. Ulysses
Grant until the question of the act’s legality could be settled.
After returning to Washington, on
January 13, 1868, the Senate voted 36 to 6 to reject Stanton’s removal. The
next day a surprised president learned that Grant had resigned earlier that
morning and Stanton had reoccupied the office. Johnson had understood that
Grant would let the president litigate the case before Stanton could retake the
office. Instead the general was swayed by the power of a Republican Congress
intent upon impeachment and sided with them. In return, four months later
the party nominated him as their winning 1868 presidential candidate. Three
days after Johnson attempted to remove Stanton a second time on February 21,
1868, with another temporary appointee, the House of Representatives impeached
him rather than let the Tenure Act be tested in the courts. Most of the 11
impeachment charges involved the Tenure Act. Two that did not, however, were
complaints about Johnson’s verbal criticisms of Congress. The Senate declined
to convict Johnson by a single vote.
In order to deny President
Johnson any opportunity to appoint a single Supreme Court justice,
Congress reduced
the size of the Court from 10 justices to seven. As soon as President Grant took office in 1869,
Congress increased
the Court’s size to nine justices, where
it has since remained. The change enabled Grant to promptly appoint two new
Republican justices.
Finally, Congress ignored the
court’s 1866 Ex Parte Milligan ruling, which denied military
tribunals jurisdiction over civilians wherever civil courts were functioning.
Nonetheless, when a Mississippi newspaperman appealed to the Supreme Court
under the ruling to seek a civil trial on a freedom-of-speech dispute with the
military district commander, Congress passed a law
denying the court judicial review on
matters involving the Reconstruction Acts. Since one of those acts had dictated
military occupation in Mississippi and nine other Southern states, Congress was
imposing military courts on civilians throughout the South even though civil
courts were available there. Notwithstanding that the law was ex post
facto and unconstitutional, the court was too cowed to challenge
Congress and declined to hear the newspaperman’s case.
The era of abusive congressional
domination ushered in crony capitalism and Gilded Age immorality. It culminated
with President Grant’s corrupt administration after he had become a pawn of the
congressional Republicans. In Reconstruction:
The Ending of the Civil War, Avery
Craven writes of Grant during the 1868 election: “Grant never quite knew what
was taking place around him or what it all meant. He became a pathetic,
bewildered, shuffling figure whom others used for ends he never understood.”
At least 10 scandals stained
Grant’s presidency. Among them was the 1873 bankruptcy of Jay Cooke &
Company, which triggered a five-year depression. Cooke was Grant’s largest
campaign contributor. Despite receiving land grants equal in size to the entire
state of Missouri, Cooke’s Northern Pacific Railroad also went bankrupt. Its
intended St. Paul-to-Seattle line had only laid track from St. Paul to
Bismarck.
Recent biographers fail to
appreciate Grant’s conflicted civil rights motives. Ron Chernow, for example, concludes he was “the single most
important president in terms of civil rights between Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon
B. Johnson.” But Chernow minimizes Grant’s self-interest. Although he won the
1868 presidential popular vote by a 53-to-47 percent margin, Republican
politicos correctly anticipated that black Southern votes would be
important. Grant
would have lost the popular vote without them, although he would have still won the Electoral College. In contrast,
he did nothing for minorities that were unimportant to the party. Examples
include Chinese Americans and Native Americans.
Federal laws started
marginalizing Chinese Americans during his presidency in 1870 and 1875 and continued afterward with a variety
of discriminatory acts mostly under
Republican administrations. In 1876, Grant secretly provoked a war with Great
Plains Native Americans. He wanted to give white men access to dubious Black
Hills gold deposits as a way to help America recover from Cooke’s depression.
Sioux descendants litigated the matter until 1980, when the Supreme Court
awarded eight tribes $106 million. Regarding the incident and “President
Grant’s duplicity,” a lower court concluded in 1975, “A
more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealing will never, in all probability,
be found in our history.” Such were the
ramifications of a rogue Congress.
Philip Leigh is
the author of two books on the Reconstruction era: Southern Reconstruction and U.
S. Grant’s Failed Presidency.
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