Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. With that in mind, one GOP Senator wants to change the face of the $50.00 bill. The proposal is being made by Rep. Patrick T. McHenry of the former Confederate state of North Carolina.
During the time prior to this year’s upcoming mid-term elections, such a suggestion might gather strong support from Southern Republicans, also know as white folks. Historically, Grant, along with Lincoln, has been villified by Southern politicians and historians given their association with the North’s victory and the subsequent signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Moreover, Grant, in particular, being the personification of all that represents being a Yankee.
Some have considered this reflective of “neo-Confederate” sentiments that have increased over the past two years since the election of the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama. Although both Grant and Lincoln were Republican presidents, the general tenor of Southern Republicans see them as interventionist and supporters of big government as evinced via their actions to intervene in the states’ right argument that led the South to secede from the Union.
In contrast, for many Southern GOPers, Reagan was for small government and held in as high esteem as Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Not to mention that President Reagan did not support either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He also opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as vetoed a bill to levy sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa.
In the age of the Tea Party, such political stretches will continue to rear their ugly head as we see with 12 states attempting to follow the example of Arizona with respect to their immigration laws. Thus it is hard to explain why Republicans continue to chant the mantra of a “post racial” America, when they introduce race into everything they attempt to implement. –torrance stephens, ph.d.
