Unless you’ve been living in outer space, you have probably noticed that things don’t seem quite normal. Texas and the United States are frankly in a mess. Thequestion becomes how did Texas and the United States Get Into This Mess?

Everything in America is based on money. People can argue all they want, the reality is, those who have the most money have the most power. Fair? No, that’s just the way it is. The struggle to control the economy has always been a key part of the American story. What I’m going to share with you in this video might upset some people, and that’s ok. History isn’t for us to feel all warm and fuzzy about, history is what happened. You CANNOT put a 2025 moral judgement on things that happened in the past. You’re not going to be able to go back in time and change diddly-squat about those events. The only thing we can do is hopefully learn from the past. If it upsets you, figure out why you’re upset.

 Ready?I rely on what we call primary source documents, those are the documents that were written by the people who were there. Not someone’s opinion. If you’re actually interested in seeing what the documents say and heck out books by Eric Foner. He’s probably the pre-eminent historian, especially when it comes to source documents.

Here we go, back in time, in fact, I’m going to take you back 160 years. Now I know that’s a long-time but don’t worry, I’m not going to go year by year, just gonna summarize some things for you.

IT’S 160 YEARS AGO 1865

160 years???? Why? Everything we are seeing today can be traced in one way or another to the America that came into existence after the civil war. Actually, it started even before the civil war and maybe I’ll talk about that in another video, but for today and to conserve time, I want to go back to just after the civil war.

Why? Well, this is a subject that makes some people really cranky because if you went to school in most of America you were given a rather slanted look at history. Especially the civil war and what took place afterwards. We all know, well I hope that everyone knows, the civil war ended in 1865 and from 1866 until 1877, there was something called Reconstruction.

Reconstruction was something that was supposed to heal the wounds left by the civil war. Instead, it became much like almost everything Congress produces a totally failed program. My  momma used to say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and reconstruction started out with good intentions. The biggest problem was that the rich people in the south, who had spent generations using slaves as cheap labor, weren’t in the mood to let them go.

Cheap Labor

In fact, they decided that even though the south had actually lost the war, that the way of life they had before was still the best way to go. They wanted cheap labor and to keep the poor people in their place. Before the civil war this was easy, the slaves were kept as property and the poor whites were just ignored. That all changed after the civil war and the rich and powerful were scared that they might actually have to pay fair wages for labor. What better way to maintain what they had then to make sure poor whites began to think of former slaves as people to be feared and people who were threatening their livelihoods.

Kind of like what some in Washington and other places say about immigrants. In some respects, what’s taking place in Washington is very much like what happened back then the rich decided to make certain that they maintained their economic power. The political leaders in the South were blatant about what they wanted, they created what we know as Black Codes.

Black Codes

Since it was no longer legal for the plantation owners to actually keep slaves, in 1866, they produced a rather unique way to keep their black people legally bound. They created a series of laws that restricted the freedom of African Americans. What were some of these laws, which were passed in 1866, outlawed by the Federal government that same year and then reinstated in 1877 when reconstruction fell apart?

Some of the laws included: Vagrancy became a crime, petty theft became a felony, black people were unable to testify against whites, black people were not allowed to serve on juries, they were not allowed to vote, and they were required to sign labor contracts that essentially turned them into property for their employer. The basically imitated slavery and were used to reinforce the idea that black people were inferior to while people. Over the next 100 years these were known as the Jim Crow laws and were only repealed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Who ran the South?

Who Ran The South?

After reconstruction, the Democratic party controlled the Southern States. In fact, From the early 1880s (remember reconstruction ended in 1877) until the late 1960s, southern states elected Democratic governors in every gubernatorial election. Except in 1911 and then in 1921 when a Republican won in Tennessee. Yes, that’s right, the democrats ruled the south, they were responsible for the Jim Crow laws, they were responsible for the segregation. Even though with the election of FDR and John Kennedy to the presidency the national democratic party had become more liberal over the years. The south was ruled by the same racial animosity that had existed there for centuries. Then they produced a new slogan. In 1968, in the south, a new catch phrase, “law and order” began to take hold.

Law and Order

The candidates who ran on that theme, included governors such as George Wallace, who once declared ‘Segregation now, segregation forever’ and Lester Maddox from Georgia, who used an axe handle as a symbol of opposition to civil rights. In 1972, then Republican presidential candidate ran using that theme, and Republicans began using it ever since. As a result, over the next decades old southern democrats slowly became Republicans. They adopted a social conservative tone and appealed to the puritanical impulses of many of the older church goers. They also  began to appeal to the economic interests of big business and as a result achieved control over the South.

The influence of the old south can still be seen, by the number of confederate flags that people still display and how many of the citizens believe the civil war was not about slavery. There is a distrust on non-whites and a fear, that there is a plot to replace the ‘white Christian’ in American society. When we want to know how Texas and the United States get into this mess? We simply have to keep looking at our history.

More to come.

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