From the caning of Charles Sumner and the Fort Pillow Massacre to 20th-century lynchings, from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, from the Civil War to the 2020 race riots, from the KKK to Antifa, and from slave patrols to anti-ICE hit teams, the history of the American left is one of violence and murder. Why does it still surprise us?
Democrats have been encouraging riots, assaults, civil wars, aggressive intimidation, and assassinations practically since their invention as a party. There has never been a time when Democrats did not believe that political violence was not only useful but praiseworthy. There has never been a time when they have not dehumanized political opponents or innocent civilians who happen to be in their way. Yet somehow, almost two centuries into this phenomenon, Republicans and moderate or unaffiliated Americans are still surprised at the ghoulishness of the left. The fact that the party of the KKK now has voters who turn a maternal murderess into a heroine and who celebrate the assassination of a free speech advocate should not really be a shock.
The first Democrat president, Andrew Jackson, a deadly duelist, lied egregiously about his opponent to get into office, and his supporters celebrated his 1829 inauguration by brawling violently and trashing the White House. Jackson would subsequently violate the Constitution to dispossess native tribes and send them on a forced march so deadly we call it the “Trail of Tears.” The movie Hillary’s America also exposes Jackson’s cruelty as a slaveowner.
The clash between slavery advocates (largely Democrats) and abolitionists was already plaguing “Bloody Kansas” in 1856 when Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) denounced slavery-loving Democrat colleagues, including Sen. Andrew Butler. Butler’s relative Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.) used his metal-topped cane to thrash the elder Sumner on the Senate floor. It is said that not a single person intervened as Brooks beat Sumner almost to death. Democrats immediately made a hero out of Brooks, and after he resigned, his constituents quickly reelected him, according to Senate records.
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In 1861, before the first elected Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, could even take office, Democrats launched the bloodiest war in America’s history because they were so afraid Lincoln would take away their slaves. About 620,000 Americans died in the conflict, and the Democrats who became Confederates proudly committed mass atrocities after making it official policy to enslave or massacre black Union soldiers or civilians and white officers who commanded black troops. The most infamous such incident was the Fort Pillow massacre, where Democrat and future KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest reportedly bragged about turning the river red with the blood of surrendering black and white Union troops. The war concluded at almost the same time as John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, assassinated Lincoln after condemning the president for supporting civil rights.
The period after the Civil War was filled with Democrat political violence and racist voter intimidation, particularly in southern states where groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Red Shirts terrorized black Americans and also white Republicans, while Democrat politicians and judges protected most of them from legal consequences. The Democrats’ racist riots, lynchings, and assassinations continued up through the civil rights era in the 1960s. Republican James Hinds was the first assassinated sitting congressman when a KKK member killed him. Medgar Evers was a victim of a KKK assassination in 1963. And the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (who had voted Republican) was in 1968.
Democrats eventually realized that they could more effectively accomplish their goals if they suddenly switched their rhetoric and pretended that they were the party of minority rights and anti-white hatred. In our present day, we have seen Antifa and anti-ICE riots, pro-Hamas riots, multiple attempted assassinations of Donald Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and millions of leftists glorifying murderers and demonizing conservatives. They are as callous to the victims of illegal alien crime as they were to the victims of slavery. The Democrat Party has never changed in fundamentals. And after two centuries of leftist violence, you’d think Americans would get a clue about how destructive and pernicious the Democrat ideology and political structure are.
