How did we get here? We’ve always been here. From my station and estimation, a racist America still suffers from the old compromises it made to racist politicians in the South. Today, the war is the same in a different time.

I’ve always held that the second great political assassination of the Civil War was that upon U.S. Grants character: he was deliberate in courting the freedmans vote; aggressively pursued Reconstruction; enabled the near fatal prosecution of the first iteration of the Klan… In short, in politics as in battle, US Grant had little compromise in him. The compromises of which you speak happened after he left office.