Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He cohosts the podcast This is Democracy with his son Zachary. His latest book is Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.
Make a one-time Donation to Democracy Paradox.
Our democracy is an evolving machine. The machine was built by a small group of people who were all men and looked the same. Over time the strength of American society is that it has grown and become more diverse and become very different. Our democracy has in an inefficient, episodic way been able to adjust and been able to at least account for some of that. But it hasn’t done that in about a generation, and it’s long time we do that.
Jeremi Suri
Key Highlights
- Introduction – 0:50
- Reconstruction and American Democracy – 3:21
- Contradictions in American Reconstruction – 15:25
- How Reconstruction Era Issues Shape Democracy Today – 23:25
- Democracy and Political Reform – 32:18
Podcast Transcript
In about three weeks, the United States will have its Midterm elections for many legislative and statewide offices. It’s the first major elections since January 6th so many view it as a consequential election for the future of American democracy. But it’s hard to talk about American democracy without becoming partisan. One of the reasons I like to talk about democracy in other countries is it allows Americans to make connections without expressing any mention of partisanship.
So, my conversation with Jeremi Suri focuses mainly on American history. His new book Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy focuses on the years following the American Civil War. It’s an overlooked period where fundamental questions about American democracy, the constitution, and civil rights were hotly contested.
Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. You might also recognize him as the host of the popular podcast This is Democracy along with his son Zachary.
Our conversation draws parallels and lessons from history to better understand the democracy of today. Jeremi does open up about the challenges for American democracy today as well as some possible reforms. Still, democracy has no easy answers. Sometimes the great champions of democracy can even act undemocratically. Even the best reforms may resolve some democratic deficits while they create new ones. It’s one of the reasons I call this podcast Democracy Paradox. But I don’t want those complications to interfere with our efforts to create a better country or as the constitution says, ‘A more perfect union.’
If you like this podcast, please tell your friends. You can also give the podcast a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Like always there is a complete transcript at democracyparadox.com. Here is my conversation with Jeremi Suri…
jmk
Jeremi Suri, welcome to the Democracy Paradox.
Jeremi Suri
My pleasure.
jmk
So, Jeremi, I really enjoyed your new book, Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy. It’s one of those books that was actually pleasurable to read.
Jeremi Suri
Thank you.
jmk
One of the lines I really liked in the book kind of hit home for me about the period that you’re emphasizing. In the book you write, “The years between Abraham Lincoln’s and James Garfield’s assassinations were the moment when these warring perspectives on democracy were planted firmly in the soil of the modern American nation.” It’s a bizarre twist because I don’t think that many people consider those years to be pivotal years for American history. I mean, when I was a student in high school and college, these were overlooked years in American history courses. Why does this period of American history get overlooked?
Jeremi Suri
It gets overlooked and it still gets overlooked, because it’s not glamorous. It’s ugly and there aren’t these larger-than-life heroic figures. We’re drawn to the Abraham Lincolns and the Teddy Roosevelts and we should be. I’ve spent so of my career writing about them. They are compelling figures. This is the strength of a presidential system. That we can have galvanizing figures. It doesn’t mean everyone likes them, but we can learn from them. Still from Lincoln’s death to Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency that begins in 1901, most Americans can’t even name who the presidents were. So, that’s why this gets overlooked. It also gets overlooked because it’s messy.
You know, the Civil War is a war against slavery fought by the Union and the Union wins. So, slavery ends. That’s a very important historical story and it’s a very strong morality tale. It becomes the foundation for civil rights activism and so many other things. But the period after is a period of resistance. It’s a period of forward and backward movement and, quite frankly, it’s a period of agreed upon corruption and limitation of democracy. So, that’s not fun to teach. That’s not really what young people want, and unfortunately, it’s often not what their parents want them to learn.
jmk
You just emphasized how the Civil War was a war against slavery and I think we can all agree to that. But your book takes place after the Civil War is over. Slavery is already abolished. How important was the abolition of slavery for the democratization of the United States?
Jeremi Suri
Absolutely crucial. We were very late to end slavery and slavery is an original sin of our system. That doesn’t make us a system that should be thrown away. But it’s an original sin and the end of slavery, and the rapid end of slavery in 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment, takes 4 million individuals who were treated as property and recognizes that many of them had already freed themselves. They had escaped. They had joined the Union Army. It makes them full citizens in the sense that they now have the ability at least constitutionally to access basic rights and to live as free citizens. So, that’s a huge accomplishment and we should not understate that.
But then it opens up all these other questions as to how they will be integrated into American society. That’s where there’s a lot of backward sliding and that’s why this period is so important because the questions that don’t have to be asked when African Americans are enslaved now have to be asked when they’re potentially individuals of power. It’s important for people to recognize that between 1865 and about 1870, there are more African Americans elected to office in communities like Texas, Mississippi, and elsewhere than there will be again for a hundred years. These former slaves now are voters in theory at least. They’re elected officials and that is incredibly scary for their former slave owners and for those who are dependent on the slave economy.
And to be fair, to try to empathize at least with the other side, it’s a really difficult adjustment for those who had grown up treating this whole class of people, this whole race of people, as inferior as animals. Now to be told that they’re your political equals, that’s a struggle. So, many groups that were formerly slaveholders or part of the slave holding economy which includes people in New York and others see value in preserving second- or third-class citizenship for those who have become citizens with the end of slavery.
jmk
I found the book really interesting, because I found it surprisingly fair especially as I went through it a second time and the way that you kind of weighed how both sides thought about what they were trying to achieve. So, as I was thinking about the book, it came to me that this civil war by other means is almost a civil war over what we want our democracy to be, the meaning of democracy. We have two competing visions behind it. In the book, you have a line where you write, “Southern whites affirmed their control over their destinies, their democracy as they defined it.” Why don’t we take a moment? Can you explain how Southern Whites defined their democracy?
Jeremi Suri
Yes, and thank you, Justin, for your observation. It’s something I worked hard to do. I think it’s our obligation as not just historians, as scholars, as citizens committed to truth to try to understand even those perspectives that we don’t like and think are wrong. Because you can’t really do anything about it, until you understand it. So, on another point, you know, read your enemy in a sense. So, I spent a lot of time reading conservative newspapers, confederate newspapers, confederate speeches, things of that sort. What I think you see is that for many of these communities that had been slave holding communities or connected to slave holding communities, democracy meant that white families get to determine their own future.
They were Democrats lower case d. They also were part of the Democratic Party upper cased D, but they were Democrats lower case d because they believed in self-rule for white communities. But they believed that African Americans, immigrants, Catholics, and others were intruders in their communities. So, the real question is democracy for whom? Their vision was a vision where white families had access to land, where white families controlled political representation, where white families controlled the economy. It was not a defense of dictatorship or in many cases, not even a defense of inequality within white communities. There were white anti-African American socialists, for example, who believed in the sharing of resources around a white community. What frightened these communities was that African Americans and others would often have more say. They feared a loss of their status and control and wealth.
jmk
So, it’s almost like a non-inclusive democracy?
Jeremi Suri
Yes, I think that’s exactly right. A bounded democracy where it’s a democracy that only includes some. It’s important to say, to be fair to these neo-confederates in a sense, that was true on the other side as well. There were very few unionists, very few Republicans, who were arguing that everyone should participate. Many of them did not support women’s suffrage which is why we take until 1920 to have women’s suffrage at least as a federal right. Many did not support, even in the North, African American full participation. So, it’s not that you had one group that was pushing for everyone to participate and another group for no one. The confederates had a narrower conception, but even the good guys, even the Unionists had their own limitations in what they thought should be included and should not be included.
jmk
I mean, I think this comes down to how you described it as being very messy, because in the Civil War you can get behind the north fighting against the slave holding South. But afterwards the north doesn’t look quite as good. The South has some redeeming qualities, even though they’re still fighting for white supremacy and many other bad things. It’s like you said, messy. You might side more with the North, but it’s difficult to be able to say either side is completely blameless or without their virtues at the same time.
Jeremi Suri
I agree. I think there are many Southern communities that are really interested in redistributing resources to poor white people, southern populism as it comes to be called. There are also many northern communities where the emphasis is, quite frankly, on corporate development, the railroads being the first corporations, with investment in activities by the government that would not help anyone except the very, very rich. So, in that situation, even though on paper the unionists, the Republicans, look more civil rights sensitive, what they’re doing is actually not helping the cause. This is a real problem for Ulysses Grant when he’s president. You know, he creates the Justice Department to enforce the law in the South. That’s when the Justice Department is created as we know it today. But Northern Republicans, his own party, don’t want to fund it because they want to put money into the railroads instead.
jmk
It’s interesting how the economic interests of the North shape their policies during this period too. In fact, you actually had a part in the book where you referenced how many people in the North actually wanted to have the southern economy rebuilt the same way it was before, just without slavery itself.
Jeremi Suri
Yeah, this is many New Yorkers. This is why in 1876 you have a Democratic Presidential candidate who wins more popular votes. He doesn’t win the electoral vote, but we don’t really know who won the electoral vote. I talk about that. Samuel Tilden, who like many New York City residents and upstate residents, really believes the southern economy should continue to be controlled by white elite planters. He does not defend slavery. But the New York economy, all that wealth in New York, comes from being the financers of the southern plantation. So, King Cotton is really good for New York. New Yorkers don’t like to see it that way, but they are as wrapped up in the slave and post-slave economy as those living in Mississippi and South Carolina are.
jmk
Samuel Tilden’s another great example of how this period’s messy. He actually became famous, because he brought down Boss Tweed. So, in some accounts of history, I mean, he can be read as somebody who’s a champion of good government, champion of fighting corruption, fighting for civil service reform. But then, on the other hand, in terms of the 1876 election, he’s also campaigning for the rights of white supremacists all at the same time.
Jeremi Suri
Absolutely. He’s a democrat through and through. Because as you said, he believes in undermining what he sees as the corruption of a functioning capitalist economy. He’s someone who comes of age in a business community in the northern part of the state. His father’s a business person and he sees, as Abraham Lincoln did, the opportunity for capitalism to liberate poor people, especially poor white people. So, for him, the Democratic party, capital D, is going to do this and it’s going to do this by empowering the business leaders North and South. He believes in that and he fights corruption as you said. He is a great reformer of the political process, particularly in New York City and in New York state.
But then he finds himself on the side of the white supremacists and the protectors of white elitism and the plantation society in the South. It should be said that with the disputed election in 1876, he does act with great integrity. I think I point this out in the chapter. Of course, he’s fighting to get the electoral votes for himself, but he doesn’t try to steal the election in the end. He doesn’t try to launch a coup. Both he and Hayes, the two candidates, do believe in the end there has to be some peaceful resolution. Which there is.
jmk
So, I also found it interesting the way that this period is dealing with some of the means that were used to bring about the end of slavery and it’s dealing with some of the ramifications from it. You have a line where you say, “Republicans had created a national executive with the most authoritarian capabilities in American history to that time.” It’s a very, very fascinating line and it kind of brings out a contradiction in terms of the United States at this time. That those who were able to bring about the abolition of slavery in some ways had to create authoritarian capabilities to be able to do it. Did that contradiction between using authoritarian means to accomplish democratic ends, did that contradiction interfere with the aim of achieving a more inclusive democracy?
Jeremi Suri
Yes, it did. It’s actually one of the paradoxes I try to point to and you’ve articulated it so well. In order to win the Civil War, the Republican Party had to give Lincoln powers that were unconstitutional. At least powers that were not thought of by the founders and probably by the letter of the law were unconstitutional. For example, Lincoln undertook the power to conscript soldiers for the federal government through the Conscription Act that Congress passed. There was no such power in the Constitution and I think it would’ve been an anathema to the founding fathers to have a president who could conscript people. I’ll remind listeners that when George Washington lead forces in the Whiskey Rebellion, he has to go hat in hand to governors and ask them to give him volunteers.
That’s one of many areas along with the creation of a national currency, the use of extra judicial powers of all kinds that is given to Lincoln so he can conduct the war as a war president. But, of course, that means that those powers now reside in the executive and especially when Lincoln is assassinated, before those war powers have been removed, you then have someone taking over in Andrew Johnson who doesn’t share the same aims, but who now has those powers at his command. So, the fight from Lincoln’s assassination until Grant’s election, from 1865 until 1868-69 is a fight by Congress to try to take those powers back. Johnson is saying no.
The clearest example of this is Johnson says that ‘As war commander, just as Lincoln could go to war against secessionist states, I can bring them back in. I don’t need Congress’s approval.’ Congress wanted to create conditions for African American suffrage and other things in order for states to be brought back into the union. Johnson says, ‘No, I’m war commander. I can say when they’re back in the union.’ Congress has to try to fight him on that.
One thing I learned that I didn’t know that I should have known is when Lincoln is assassinated in April of 1865, Congress isn’t even in session. They don’t come back into session until December. So, from April to December of 1865, Andrew Johnson is virtual dictator of the United States and that’s scary that our system built that in. I think it is part of a longer story of presidents and executive power growing often at the cost of democratic action even though it’s sometimes done for democratic purposes.
jmk
One other institution that is oftentimes seen as authoritarian that was used to bring about the end of slavery and even to protect democracy throughout the South was also the United States Army. It’s odd because, again, nobody thinks of an army or the military as being a democratic institution. I mean, it’s almost the definition of an autocratic institution. So, was the failure of political institutions to play a greater role one of the big reasons why reconstruction didn’t last?
Jeremi Suri
Absolutely, and you’re right on both counts. Said very well. The US Army is enforcing the law. You have many of these communities in the South that are devastated by the war. But also, as I point out in the book, many local sheriffs, police officers are not going to enforce the law. They’re not going to protect African American communities. I give a number of these countless narratives of events that occur in places like Memphis where you have white communities that just attack and rampage through African American communities killing, raping, and stealing resources in incredibly brutal ways. It feels like you’re reading about the kind of warfare that you think would not happen in the United States. Local sheriffs and police are part of the rampagers.
So, the US Army has to enforce the law. Second, the US Army is the most integrated institution in the US at the time. It’s not fully integrated. African American soldiers are in their own units, but they’re union officers. They are paid reasonably well. Not as much as white soldiers but compared to other professions, they’re educated. They’re taught to read and write, so they’re given a chance in life through the military. It is actually opening space as it will a generation later during World War II and thereafter for Jewish citizens, for African American citizens, and for others.
Then the other point that that has to be made is that the political institutions that need to be built are not built because there isn’t the funding or consensus especially after Lincoln’s death. So, it takes until the 1870s until you have an actual Justice Department which can do what we assume the Justice Department does today: enforce the law through civilian law, through legal action, through various things of that sort. That doesn’t exist because President Andrew Johnson doesn’t want it. But it also doesn’t exist because the government doesn’t fund it.
So, the military ends up doing a lot of this work because the military is there and has the resources. But one of the tragedies is that there’s not enough military power to do this. It means that our political institutions are poorly developed for protecting democracy. We rely too much on the military and too little on the kinds of justice, civilian institutions that should exist.
jmk
Yeah, I had a hard time wrapping my head around how terrifying it was for African Americans during this time. You had a part in the book where you mentioned that it wasn’t even a crime to rape an African American woman in South Carolina. It’s just hard to imagine the types of what we call crimes today were legitimized both by society and by the law during that era.
Jeremi Suri
And maybe this is a positive story for us today then. That I think for all of us, and I’m sure for all of your listeners, it’s not even a subject of discussion. Raping someone is a crime. But for Americans, even those who were anti-slavery in the 19th century, at least through the 1860s, 70s and 80s, there was a presumption that African American and maybe other women were inferior and that this was appropriate behavior. So, even those who were on the good side often didn’t see this as the crime that we see it as today. Again, maybe that shows we’ve learned something over time. We’ve made some progress.
jmk
Yeah, but that’s just one example. I mean, for me it symbolized the way that society and the law legitimized lynching and legitimized extrajudicial attacks on African Americans. I mean, just all of the different crimes that you hear about that are just difficult to understand how they happened. It makes so much more sense when you realize that some of these just acts of terrorism weren’t even criminal at the time.
Jeremi Suri
That’s right and these acts of terrorism, and I think that’s the right way to describe them, were used to enforce power. It’s not just that they weren’t illegal. They were often encouraged. The law was encouraging them. It’s terrifying to say because that’s how certain people stayed in power. You use violence to keep power. This was Ida B. Well’s whole point. When she starts writing about the horrors of lynching, it’s not just the victims. It’s all those who see this and are cowered by it. They change their behavior by it. That’s exactly what’s being done.
jmk
So, the title of the book is Civil War by Other Means. You’re using this idea of civil war to extend, not just through this period, but all the way until today. You actually write near the beginning of the book, I think it’s the first sentence where you say, “Worries about a new civil war in America are misplaced, because the Civil War never fully ended.” It raises a question. If we normally say the Civil War was about slavery, the Civil War comes to an end when slavery’s abolished. So, if we say the Civil War never really ended, what was the Civil War really about?
Jeremi Suri
Great question. So, the Civil War was about slavery. But once you resolve that issue, the fighting continues around other issues and the fighting continues far from the battlefield. So, we end slavery. But then there’s the question, what happens to those four million citizens and their descendants? What place do they have in society? And back to the excellent question you asked before, which conception of democracy do we have? Do we have a post-slavery conception that says there are different tiers of citizenship? That’s how many view this even in the north. Or do we say we have a system where everyone is pretty much the same or that we move toward equality? That’s what progressives will later say. We are still fighting that battle today.
And it’s not just about race. It’s about economic power. It’s about cultural and social power. So, in that sense, there isn’t a resolution to what democracy really means which is why your podcast and so many others are so important because we have to talk about this. It’s not prima facia. It’s not the canvas as in the way you described it before.
jmk
So, do you think that still is the real debate going on within American politics? Do you think the debate is really about different meanings of democracy? And do you think that those meanings effectively haven’t changed even with all the progress from Civil Rights, expanded enfranchisement, and all the different progress that’s happened? Do you think that the central conflict is still that same question about what democracy means and the same definition more or less for both sides?
Jeremi Suri
It’s such a good question. I have spent so long thinking about this trying to figure it out. So, my thinking as of now having written a book about this big question is that we have made a lot of progress. We’ve given some examples already in this discussion. There are ways in which our society is more inclusive than it was in the late 19th century and that’s good. So, we need to acknowledge progress in that sense. No one is arguing to take away the rights of women to vote. I hope no one’s arguing for that. So, it’s not exactly the same.
But what is unresolved that goes back to the Civil War is the degree to which we are going to create a government that ensures that all people have a chance to participate in that government. So, whether that government and that structure of our democracy should ensure a long list of basic rights or a short list of basic rights. In a sense, the debate around abortion is the same. The question of whether each person, male or female has a chance, a right, to participate in decisions over their body and to control decisions over their body or is that not the case. That is a slavery question of another kind.
Women have far more rights in our society than they did a hundred years ago. But they still are in many states, like Texas, very limited in their access to healthcare, in their access to control over their bodies. I mean, when you tell a woman that she has to go to another state after she’s been raped to end a pregnancy, you’re making a judgment over who gets to decide in your state what they do with their body. And my wife would be the first to point out that we don’t make men do that. Men get lots of choices over their body. So, if slavery was a debate over control of one’s body, we’re still in that space. It’s not exactly the same debate. But it’s a continuity, a connection, and I think seeing it that way is important because it helps us understand the inherited limitations and prejudices that we’re still dealing with.
jmk
So, do you feel that that debate is reflective in the real political divide between the two parties of today, the Democrats and Republicans? Is that really the big difference between Democrats and Republicans or is that debate happening outside of the political contests, outside of the political parties? Is that more of a debate in society or is it literally a debate between the parties themselves?
Jeremi Suri
I think it is the most fundamental dividing line today between Democrats and Republicans. If you ask someone if they believe we should make it easier for people to vote or harder, how they answer that question predicts which party they are in. There are many other issues that matter, of course, but they all come back to that. Fundamentally, the Republican party today has become a party that is concerned about power diffusing into the hands of too many people who are non-traditional actors in our society. The Democratic Party is a party that is seeking to do just that. It believes the strength of our society is in diffusing power into the hands of more people who look and think different things. Yeah, that’s our debate. That’s Trump versus Biden. That’s everything we do today.
jmk
Now, obviously the Democrats used to be the party of the South. Republicans used to be the party of the North. A lot has changed in terms of the dynamics between the two political parties. Do you think that that’s a recent development, that central divide between the Democrats and Republicans? Or do you feel that there’s always been a sense of that divide between the two parties?
Jeremi Suri
I think that divide is one of the parts of the Civil War that doesn’t go away. So, that divide continues, but it was represented in the opposite parties. So, the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and the Party of Union and the party of what Lincoln believed in, Theodore Roosevelt believed in, which was mobility for poor people and giving them more say. That’s why Lincoln was a Republican. I talk about this a bit in the book. He was a Republican because he was a poor white man from Kentucky who had no slaves and no land. He wanted a party that offered opportunity. He wanted economic growth so he could have some of it. The Democratic Party was protecting white planters.
That flips as Lyndon Johnson predicted in the 1960s, because when Lyndon Johnson as a Democratic president embraces civil right, pushes civil rights, many Democrats in the South (in the South states like Texas were all Democrat) they leave the party and make themselves Republicans. The Republican Party welcomes them because the Republican Party wants these voters. Those who were Southern Democrats continue to oppose civil rights. People like Strom Thurmond in South Carolina become Republicans. So, the parties flip in large part because from Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party moves toward embracing civil rights. So, the change in the Democratic Party leads to a change in the Republican Party and they flip.
Then these issues get clarified when you have demagogues in the Republican Party who realize not only that they can get votes this way, but they can create fear and consolidate power by playing to these prejudices. Newt Gingrich does that. Ronald Reagan does it a little bit. Newt Gingrich does it and then certainly Donald Trump.
jmk
So, we’ve kind of been going way past the arc of the book. In fact, the narrative actually ends more or less with the assassination of James Garfield. If this is really a civil war that has no ending, why do you choose to end your narrative there?
Jeremi Suri
So, the book goes, as you say, from one president, the first presidential assassination in our history, Lincoln, to the second James Garfield. There’ll be a third soon thereafter. But I think those 20 years that I focus on from 1865 to 1881, that period of about 20 years, is really crucial to understanding the shifts that occur thereafter. I ended the narrative there because, of course, there’s much more that happens, but I want us to show the parallels. People are always asking me, ‘What period are we in?’ I think we’re back in that period. In some ways, that’s the period that’s analogous to where we are. That doesn’t mean everything’s the same, but I tried in there to show how the language, for instance, about fraud and elections, that argument is made about African American voters and others.
Those who don’t get those votes say it’s fraudulent. That’s what’s going on today. The effort to impeach a president, that works to impeach, but not to convict. The investigations of legal mishandling of government resources. All of that is a parallel. Why is that important? Because first of all, it should give us some confidence that we’re not stuck in this. It can also show us how deeply buried this is and what we need to do, not just to deal with the bad actors today, but to solidify our democracy so this doesn’t happen again.
jmk
So, that raises an interesting question. Is it necessary to institute political reform in terms of the electoral system, in terms of our political system, in order to preserve or strengthen democracy?
Jeremi Suri
Yes, and other generations have done that. Our democracy is an evolving machine. The machine was built by a small group of people who were all men and looked the same. Over time the strength of American society is that it has grown and become more diverse and become very different. Our democracy has in an inefficient, episodic way been able to adjust and been able to at least account for some of that. But it hasn’t done that in about a generation, and it’s long time we do that.
Look at the US Senate today. I mean, we have basically more than 60-70% of the population represented by a small number of senators. Then we have a large number of senators who represent a very small part of the population. It is completely out of whack. Then with the misuse of the filibuster essentially those representing less than a quarter of the population stop and stymie legislation of all kinds. That’s one of many examples. Those institutions are the same institutions in the past, but as our society has changed, they’re maladjusted.
It’s like trying to put on your father’s clothes. It doesn’t work. You need new clothes. It doesn’t mean you get rid of all the styles, but you adjust the clothes you wear to the changes in the climate, the changes in your body type, et cetera. We need to do that and we can do that. There are bills on the table that have passed the House that would make changes. There’s one that looks like it’s going to move forward with both Senate and House approval to change the way we count the electoral votes. We need to have a fuller discussion about a series of reforms that we can undertake, we hope in a bipartisan way. But if necessary, it has to be done through a single partisan way to get these measures through to adjust our democracy to the needs of our time.
jmk
But to bring about more radical change, though, and I don’t mean really radical change. Still, to be able to do something like bringing an end to the electoral college or to change the way that Congressmen are elected maybe to something more like a proportional representation or some kind of mixed member system on a much larger scale would likely need constitutional amendments. But in this era of political calcification where both sides are very hardened and they’re somewhat balanced at the same time seems almost impossible to pass any kind of significant reform that requires a constitutional amendment. Do you see any prospect for that to change in the next few years or maybe even decades?
Jeremi Suri
Yes, I do think that will change because the impossible, I’ve seen this as a historian, can very quickly become the inevitable. So, when a generation of voters, my students and others, see that this system is stymied, calcified, as you said so appropriately, and that we need major change, you can very quickly see people galvanize in that direction. This has happened before. We go in this episodic way through long periods without reforms to the Constitution and then very short periods when many of these reforms happen. The first one, of course, is after the Civil War, as described in my book, when you get three major amendments and other major legislation, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.
The second period is in the early 20th century. There were four major amendments to the constitution including amendments to provide women with the right to vote, creating direct election of senators. People forget senators were chosen by state legislatures. Many other changes that occur. I think we’re at a point not only where that’s necessary, but where there’s more and more recognition by voters that they need something like this and that it doesn’t have to serve just one party. So, that’s certainly one way we could go and I do foresee that happening. It seems impossible now, but it can very quickly become inevitable as enough people mobilize around this.
The other point I’d make is there are many things we can do on the model of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that would through Congress create major enduring legislative change. Two examples are very simple. Bring Washington, DC and Puerto Rico into the country as full states, states 51 and 52. DC is larger than, I think, three other states in terms of population. Puerto Rico is, I think, larger than about half of the states in terms of population. These states, as full members, would have senators. Think how that would change things. They would have voting members of Congress and that would make a big difference in making our system more democratic because then the mostly brown and black people who live in those states would have representation and participation.
jmk
So, we’ve been talking quite a bit about some of the reforms and some different ideas. But I really do want to come back to what a first step might be. In the book you actually write, “Democracies do not come together when they glorify their past, but when they strive to repair it.” It’s a really elegant line. What’s the first step towards repairing our past?
Jeremi Suri
Great question. I think the first step is our having a conversation in any community we can with our friends, especially our conservative friends about why it’s valuable to recognize that our country is a great country that has done some things that are very anti-democratic and very damaging and how that’s a patriotic act. Because once we start naming and identifying what we’ve done, as we love our country, the things we’ve done that are not what we love, it then creates consensus to do something about it. What stands in the way of change is denial and silence – not acknowledging these things.
Look, I’m a Jew, right? We’ve spent 70 years as Jews reminding people about the Holocaust, not because we like talking about the Holocaust. But we know that one of the ways to make sure it doesn’t happen again is to make sure people know about it, know what caused it, and know how it happened. Germans have taught us that you can love your country and you can still educate yourself. There’s no German citizen I’ve met, educated in the last 20-30 years that doesn’t know the history of the Holocaust. Think how many Americans there are who don’t know the history of lynching and many of the other things we’ve discussed today that are discussed in my book.
If we can get people to acknowledge that they love their country and they also want to deal with and recognize the things we’ve done that have been short of our ideals, we can begin then to build a consensus to address some of these issues. I’m not for making anyone feel guilty (no one alive today is responsible for the events of the 19th century), but for getting us to realize we’ve inherited that. These are the seeds in the ground that we need to remove one way or another. Then I think we would very quickly start to talk about voting, because that’s where the rubber meets the road. There are reasons why certain communities vote less and there are historical reasons that we can address.
Why don’t we begin by creating a right to vote for everyone and saying everyone should? We should make it easier for them to vote. Let’s put more voting booths in poor African American communities. Let’s create more secure ways for people to vote, including by mail, which is often more secure than voting in person. We can continue to have that conversation and make, I think, some small but very meaningful steps.
jmk
Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Jeremi. It’s a really great book, Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long Unfinished Fight for Democracy. It comes out a few months before Christmas, so it’s a perfect gift for that high school student who’s obsessed with history that’s going to overlook or miss out rather on some of the events that happened during this period. It compliments and fills in the gaps in terms of American history. So, if you know somebody who’s high school or college, it’s a perfect book for somebody around that age. It’s a perfect book for adults. Thank you so much for joining me today, Jeremi.
Jeremi Suri
Thank you so much for having me on and really excellent questions.
Key Links
Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy by Jeremi Suri
This is Democracy a podcast from Jeremi and Zachary Suri
Follow Jeremi Suri on Twitter @JeremiSuri
Democracy Paradox Podcast
Lynn Vavreck on the 2020 Election and the Challenge to American Democracy
Can America Preserve Democracy without Retreating from it? Robert C. Lieberman on the Four Threats
More Episodes from the Podcast
More Information
Apes of the State created all Music
Email the show at jkempf@democracyparadox.com
Follow on Twitter @DemParadox, Facebook, Instagram @democracyparadoxpodcast
Democracy Paradox is part of the Amazon Affiliates Program and earns commissions on items purchased from links to the Amazon website. All links are to recommended books discussed in the podcast or referenced in the blog.
