While we can blame that factionalized party for mot getting the job done, in my view 100% Dem opposition was the real culprit. Same goes for the Blair bill, which Republicans passed three separate times in the 1880s and House Dems squashed each time.

Even then, 85% of Senate Republicans supported the bill. It’s certainly fair to point out that Republicans were not as unified on this as they had been 20 years earlier. But we’re still talking about a party that overwhelmingly (and actively) supported Black rights.

However, those provisions were stripped by the Sen. committee, and the bill died because 8 western Republicans more concerned with the tariff supported Dem. Parliamentary maneuvering to prevent a vote on the bill. Importantly Northern Republican newspapers heavily criticized the silver revolt

The Lodge Bill would be a case in point though—it passed the House with 98% Republican support and 100% Dem opposition, and did in fact include provisions that Dems interpreted as authorizing troops at the polls. After the 1890 midterms, Harrison also requested a renewed Force Bill from the Senate.

Wang, _Trial of Democracy_ (1997), Charles Calhoun, and Heersink/Jenkins, _Republican Party Politics_ (2020) make this pretty clear. The problem was that between 1875-95 Republicans controlled Congress for just one session. Everything died in the Democratic House.

Small nitpick—loved the threads!

Just finished the series last night. Love these threads, though I think you’re overstating the Republican abandonment of Black voters in the 1880s. Were they as committed to enforcement as the 1870s? No, but there were still numerous Republican efforts in Congress to prevent the Solid South.

I made a similar comparison in 2020 at the old place:

Apparently historical images are now based on vibes and historical writing can be conducted through hallucinatory autocomplete plagiarism machines. You could, instead, support historians and the important work they do. As a historian and archivist, I’m appalled by this “guidance”

When did we go from not letting students cite Wikipedia because it was "unreliable" to endorsing LLMs that aggregate info from sources without critical perspective, are environmentally destructive, promote plagiarism, prevent learning critical skills, and are FAR less reliable than wiki?

Really appreciate the endorsement, and thrilled our essay was useful. Like Rachel, would love to hear what the students thought!

Yes, thanks so much! Appreciate the endorsement!

Oof not everything is digitized and quick word searches are no substitute for archival research. Method shows when one reads books and articles.