H. W. Brands Quotes
When the Constitution was written in 1787, there was this supposition that American politics would be above party. The people who would staff the positions in government would have the interests of the country, or at least their states and congressional districts, at heart, and so they wouldn't form permanent political parties.
Brands, H. W. Founding Partisans: How the Founders Forged a Nation. Basic Books, 2023.
George W. Bush. See {618119} for the rejoinder to the defense.
In the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the delegates agreed that the there would be no official transcript and that the debates were to be kept secret:
This hypocrisy and insincerity was seen for what it was by the Radical Republicans, Abolitionists and the newly freed slaves themselves. See {617728} and {617339}. However, this approach soon was adopted as the “party line” by intellectual Southerners of the time, and has continued to this day. The rebellion that caused the deaths of more Americans than all the rest of our wars, was not as they stated it caused by any conflict over slavery, no economic causes, no differences in labor philosophies and trade, no contention over control of new territories, but was simply an attempt to vigorously support and defend the Constitution. However, one advantage to using this story as an explanation of the bloody rebellion, was that the defeated Southerners could see their acts as somewhat nobly motivated.
It was commonly asked of Blacks applying to register. There are few people who could give a cogent response to this. What made it terrible was that the white racist registrars had the unilateral authority to determine whether or not the oral response was adequate. Recording of responses were prohibited so that no Black who was disenfranchised could ever appeal when he/she was rejected. This is one of the thousands of techniques that were used throughout the South to prevent Negro voting. They were so egregious that Lyndon Johnson was abe to force through Southern filibusters The Voting Rights Act which has eliminated the worst of the racist restrictions on Black voting. As the worst of the racist white generation has died off, Southern discrimination in voting has lessened and the situation is better each year. By 2012 there were some who claimed that the law was no longer necessary do to changes in attitude and practice, but others worried that if there were no longer any forms of discrimination in voting, why some wanted to repeal the Voting Rights Act.
Henry William Brands Jr. is an American historian. He holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his Ph.D. in history in 1985. He has authored 30 books on U.S. history. His works have twice been selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
