Before a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Kevin Seefried was an unknown American citizen, a 53-year-old resident of rural Sussex County, Delaware, who flew a Confederate battle flag outside his home. But after attending then-President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on the day Congress was to certify Joseph Biden’s election victory, Seefried joined the frenzy, climbing through a broken window at the Capitol moments before he was photographed carrying his Confederate flag inside. In June, Seefried was convicted of a felony for obstructing an official proceeding, one of hundreds of low-level Jan. 6 defendants brought to justice.
Why the Confederate flag? Although it is trendy nowadays to search for parallels between our current dilemmas and the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, historian Jeremi Suri points to the aftermath of the Civil War. That is because the question that hung over the post-war settlement in the South is the same question Americans are grappling with today: What kind of democracy are we going to be?
In this episode of History As It Happens, Mr. Suri discusses his new book, “Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy,” in which he traces the fight for civil and voting rights during Reconstruction to today’s controversies: More than 300 GOP candidates for various elected offices across the country continue to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen.
“I never thought I’d write a book on the 1870s, but living through the last six, seven years in our country, it became imperative to me as a historian to try to understand the origins of the divisions we see today. The violence we’re experiencing, the anti-democratic behavior. And as I did my research I found the strongest parallels to [the aftermath of the Civil War], and many of the seeds for the issues we’re dealing with today were planted in the soil after the Civil War,” said Mr. Suri, a historian at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Reconstruction period holds many resonant lessons. Americans resorted to violence to alter the outcome of elections. Congress tried and failed to convict an impeached president. And the very fate of American democracy seemed to be at stake during hyperpolarized times. Listen to Jeremi Suri discuss those parallels by checking out this episode of History As It Happens.
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