Ken Burns' "Congress" Is Pure Blather

Oregon Magazine ^ | 26 May 2003 | "LL"

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

Oregon Magazine

"Ken Burns' "Congress"

May 26, 2003, 9:00 PM --

The most powerful accomplishment of tonight's segment of the PBS program, Ken Burns' "Congress," is that Mr. Burns managed to describe the period of official racism in America from just prior to the Civil War to the post-Reconstruction era, without once identifying a pro-slavery congressman or senator as a Democrat.

When the Republicans outlawed slavery (which is exactly what actually happened), guess who walked out of the House and the Senate. Their party begins with the letter "D." Guess who after the Civil War worked to disembowel the black franchise. You have it. The same bunch.

Not once did Mr. Burns use the terms antislavery congressman or senator, then follow it with the word Republican. To listen to this program, the two terms (antislavery and Republican) didn't go together. The one Republican identified in this whole section of the show was described first as a radical, and then as being antislavery. This, of course, left the impression that the fellow was odd for a Republican. Everybody knows that radicals, regardless of party affiliation, are few in number. Taken in this context, it implied that it was unusual for Republicans to be antislavery. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Nor did Mr. Burns identify the political affiliation of the first black American to be elected to either house of congress. A former slave who attained office during Reconstruction, before Democrats managed to change the rules so blacks couldn't win, Mr. White was a Republican. During my research, I didn't run across a single black Democrat who was elected to federal office during Reconstruction. All I located were Republicans.

The only Democrat Burns identified as such was Lincoln's Vice President, Andrew Johnson, who assumed the residency after the assassination. He was the architect of the first version of Reconstruction. Here's some American history which will shock every black Democrat who reads it.

Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change Johnson's program. They gained the support of northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon Negroes.

The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto--the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them.

A few months later (led by "Radical" Republicans) Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment. The Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in Congressional elections that fall.

In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They passed laws placing restrictions upon the President. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the ("Radical" Republicans in the) House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote.

. This was the Democrat the program said supported the Union side in the war. Historians like the one who wrote the text above frequently describe him as a "decent, honorable man." His acts defy that description At his best, he was a bad executive who lacked the guts to stand firm for the principles attributed to him.

This inability to give credit to the good guys or discredit to the bad guys if the good guys are Republicans and the bad guys Democrats is common practice by liberals in television. (And all other forms of communication, as well.) If they are subtle, people like you don't realize what has happened. A bad guy can be presented as being on the correct side. They can leave behind the presumption of Democrat innocence without actually saying it. If you are ignorant of the facts about the events described, and aren't aware that liberal program producers use these deceptive methods -- hell, if you're just not paying very close attention at the time -- they get away with it.

Summing it up, this program said that congress ended slavery. While describing some of the great personalities involved in the debate, it did not even mention their political affiliations. That way, the audience was not informed that Republicans were against slavery and Democrats for it.

A famous socialist once said that the public will believe any lie if it's a big enough lie. The lie of omission in Ken Burn's Congress is a big one. It is perhaps the biggest coverup in the history of history.

If the situation had been reversed -- if Republicans had supported slavery and Democrats voted to end it -- you may be sure that the program would have been quite different. I am reminded of the time PBS, in a nature program, credited the extinction of the original species of American horse, which lived here before the Spanish arrived, as being due to "climate change and human activity." We know which race of people wiped out the big buffalo herds. PBS identifies that bunch with ten foot neon lights and trumpets. (The evil European white race.) But when the noble original inhabitants of America wipe out an entire species? It is politically incorrect to mention them by name. So it is with those who supported slavery and those who ended it.

If you watched the segment of the PBS series about Jim Crow that ran after Charlie Rose's program on May 28, you saw the lynching of blacks, you heard about the beating deaths of blacks who merely wanted to vote and you cheered when southern blacks finally managed to get enough people registered to take a congressional seat from a white male "conservative," and give it to a white female "moderate." (The "conservative" racist that blacks finally defeated in that election, by the way, was a Democrat. When you hear the term "conservative," you automatically assume the individual is a Republican. The people who make programs for, and work at, PBS know that.)

No mention was made that all of those people who lynched blacks, all of those people who beat blacks to death for trying to register to vote and all of those people who committed all the other atrocities all the way down to forcing blacks to sit in the back of the bus were Democrats. Direct descendants of the Democrats who tried to block all Republican attempts to end slavery in congress, who started the Civil War to defend slavery, who with Andrew Johnson tried to disenfranchise blacks during Reconstruction, who opposed the Republican Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Republican 14th Amendment -- and who created Jim Crow when they managed to retake congress in the decades that followed the Civil War.

As far as this program was concerned, none of the above happened. Civil rights began in Democrat congresses in the Sixties. And, as far as that goes, no mention of the Democrat resistance to the Sixties civil rights legislation was made, either. Republican votes are the only reason that legislation wasn't defeated, in a Democrat congress with a Democrat Speaker of the House, a Democrat Senate Majority Leader and Democrats chairing all the important committees!!!.. During this section of the program, one brief mention was made of congressional Reconstruction civil rights action -- but, of course, didn't identify which party had initiated it, and which party had fought it.

The congress of Ken Burns' history is a fraud. The Democrat-protecting bias by way of omission here is titanic. The statements made by black historian Barbara Fields, implying that with present-day Republican congresses Democracy no longer exists, were outrageous. The Republicans identified in the later portions of the program were portrayed as bigots, blueblood boobs and bloated business barons. And as felons and warmongers, of course. This is all standard practice at PBS -- the network that tells us they explain the meaning of things.

Do America, Oregon and history a favor. If you usually give these people money, stop it. If your political representatives support public broadcasting, fire them.

© 2003 Oregon Magazine

[GOPcapitalist]

I don't think our Southern conservatism is harmful to the GOP...quite the contrary, it is the most reliable anchor the Pubbies have and the stats bear that out. Even detractors admit that.

Don't expect rational statements such as the above to phase him any. He thinks that the south of today votes republican because after the war a bunch of benevolent, caring, and conservative yankees moved down here and taught us to be like them...or something along those lines.

I don't think he has explained yet why, if those yankees were so conservative, they let their own part of the country turn into welfare-topias and urban murder cesspools. I'm sure he will get around to answering it someday and though I don't know what that answer may be, let me simply note that I would not be surprised if it involved some soviet-america conspiracy orchestrated by the elusive confederate "Knights of the Golden Circle."

[Diddle E. Squat]

Thanks for clueing me in to a new shortcut. It seems there are a few phrases that when invoked by a poster are a tipoff that they are not to be taken seriously, such as referring to President Bush as 'Jorge' or claiming a Kissinger/Bildeberger type conspiracy.


I can now add 'The War of Northern Aggression' to those phrases.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Republican President Warren G. Harding hosted a Klan meeting in the White House!

I believe your implication is misleading. Harding went down to Birmingham, Alabama in 1923(?) and gave a speech(not at all well received) to a white audience on the importance and need for improving the rights of Blacks. That took guts, and is hardly the kind of thing a KKK member would do.

[AnalogReigns]

It's very (very) rare to find any self-published book that has sold this many copies (6,000) let alone in a 3rd printing. You denigrators of Grand Old Partisan's well researched perspective may well be wise to reserve judgment until you've read the book.

I have the book now (thanks for signing it Grand Old...) and my initial scan of it makes it look pretty good, especially from the pen of a Yankee... ;)

Conservative Republicans have always been about a strong United States, freedom and equal rights...and its time we stopped Democrats from re-re-rewriting our history, and that we reclaim the honorable legacy of the Party of Lincoln.

The neo-Confederates in the conservative movement don't do us any good--in that they really do accept the Democrat version of history, and their neo-racism (though denied) alienates the groups which could be most benefited by and beneficial to, conservativism, namely poor blacks and hardworking new (legal) immigrants.

The biggest embarrassments to Republicans in the last year have come from the (former) Democrats from the Deep South--certain Senators who shall remain un-named. Yes it was an unfair hatchet job by the press and Democrats, but hey, Republicans need to consistently and loudly stand for the principles of racial equality, not allowing any more that to merely be a catch phrase of the Democrat plantation.

Republicans are a party originally formed by principle--and through those principles, applied to our day, we shall prevail.

[Grand Old Partisan]

I give the Ken Burns Civil War series an A++

[Grand Old Partisan]

You're the one injecting regionalism into the debate. In all my posts, I defy anyone to find any criticism of the South, ever. The forty percent of southerners -- the blacks and many poor whites -- who supported the Union during the Civil War -- and then voted Republican as soon as they could -- I praise, while northern Democrats (Copperheads) who supported the rebels I condemn.

What I do is criticize Democrats, then and now. It is not the Confederacy which is to blame for the Republican Party's inability to do more than slow down the Democrats' socialist onslaught, but the veneration for the Democrats rebels of the Confederacy by many Republicans today which allows Democrats to throw Republicans on the defensive on nearly any issue with charges that our motives are racist. I could go on, but I can't be expected to rehash what I spent two years putting into book form. See my website for more.

[Grand Old Partisan]

'The War of Northern Aggression'

Exactly! There's no point debating with someone who assumes that the Unites States Government lawfully and constitutionally suppressing a rebellion was wrong.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Warren Harding was far more progressive on racial issues than was his predecessor, Democrat President Woodrow Wilson. That KKK charge is bogus.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Thank you, Analog Reigns! You summarize exactly why I wrote the book and exactly why so many top Republicans love it. As I say in the book: "How can we Republicans expect voters to place their confidence in us when we lack confidence in our own heritage?"

[AnalogReigns]

I think the problem with the whole debate, and I've said this to you before, is people personalize (and romanticize) the Confederate cause--confusing personal (and often very honorable) motivations on the part of military heros and Generals (I will always venerate Robert E. Lee for example) with the grubby politics behind the causes of the War. As has been shown again and again here on FR, in the hard documentation of the Secession debates, the politics in the South for the Confederacy ...the reason BEHIND "states rights," was all about preserving the status quo--and that seemingly essential "peculiar institution" namely, slavery.

Does this mean that Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and other honorable warriors, were fighting with ill-motivations? Of course not--but neither should we project the best of the the Southern heros' motivations onto the seamy politics of the Confederacy--or as you would say the DEMOCRAT Confederacy.

Of course all thinking people who know history reject the Disneyesque picture many have of the Civil War with the North fighting to free the slaves...they were fighting to SAVE THE UNION--and freeing the slaves was only a happy consequence of that, not the original motivation.

Individual motivations and gallantry should not be confused with the politics behind the war. It is good the Confederacy lost... we as a nation are better, indeed more blessed, for it.

I think Lee would agree.

[Susannah]

"Except for a few whiny minutes from the black female "historian" cited in the OREGON MAGAZINE article above. "~Ronly Bonly Jones

I taped the Civil War series. It's the best documentary I've seen on the Civil War. And, I did notice the black female historian's comments played between the actual viewings and narrative. She was, IMO, inferring that Lincoln did little or nothing for blacks.

[wardaddy]

Show me a real neo-confederate as you call them. Give me an example of one that is currently corrupting the modern Republican party.

Btw...our recollection of the radicals like Thaddeus Stevens whom you praise is a bit different...lol

Where is Mortin Sult/Dutch Comfort anyhow these days....if you're out there FReepmail me in code so I'll know you're about!

[Grand Old Partisan]

Yeah, the whiny black woman was the worst part of the program. Lincoln critics completely miss the complete lack of rancor in his speeches and statements during the Civil War. How easy it would have been for him to whip up northern hatred for the southern rebels!

One of my favorite Lincoln stories is when he visited Richmond in April 1865. Black people there who recognized him got down on their knees, but the President said sternly: "No, don't kneel to me. You must only kneel to your Father in Heaven and thank him for the freedon you will hereafter enjoy. An old black man then removed his hat and bowed to the President. Abraham Lincoln then removed his own hat and bowed in return.

THAT, my neo-Confederate friends, was "The Real Lincoln".

[Diddle E. Squat]

That's an understatement. Did not Woodrow Wilson(who so many liberal historians declare as perhaps the greatest president ever) institute civil service reforms that barred Blacks from those jobs? IIRC, during Teddy Roosevelts tenure Blacks had begun to hold govt positions and move up the ladder, only to be knocked off by Woodrow Wilson.

[Grand Old Partisan]

I'm going to get into finger-pointing at prominent Republicans. It's not a matter of people but of ideas.

"Mortin Sult/Dutch Comfort" -- no idea what you're talking about.

As for Thaddeus Stevens, Democrat historians have brutally maligned the man who, in my opinion, was the greatest Republican who ever lived.

[Valin]

Are you really sure you want to go do that road?

[Grand Old Partisan]

Definitely. Woodrow Wilson was the guy who segregated the federal government. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat was the most racist President since Andrew Johnson. Both were Democrats.

[Grand Old Partisan]

I'm NOT going to get into finger-pointing at prominent Republicans. It's not a matter of people but of ideas.

"Mortin Sult/Dutch Comfort" -- no idea what you're talking about.

As for Thaddeus Stevens, Democrat historians have brutally maligned the man who, in my opinion, was the greatest Republican who ever lived.

[wardaddy]

Ugh.....

That hurt.....Thad is not beloved down here. Fact is....I can think of very few historical figures less loved in my "region".

Mortin Sult is a perpetually banned FReeper from over the years who worships the Radical Reconstructionists as do you sadly.

He has been I think The Cruiser, Who is George Salt, and LLan_DDeussant as well in addition to the two other monikers. I can't believe you don't recall him.

OK...enuff chit chat...what about my ????.....who is a nationally recognized Republican Neo-Confederate corrupting the Party right now?

[Grand Old Partisan]

Sorry about my first preply. Like I said, I'm NOT going to get into finger-pointing at Republican leaders.

As for my hero, Thaddeus Stevens, he was the (slightly fictionalized) villian of "Birth of the Nation" , that wildly over-the-top pro-KKK movie -- which to me is a great compliment. All this Democrat basshing of Stevens ignores the fact that Republican Reconstruction, Radical or otherwise, did not even begin in the South until the March 1867 passage of the Reconstruction Act. That law was more than anything a reaction against how brutally the ex-rebel Democrats of the South were treating the blacks and white Unionists in the two years before Reconstruction began.