By Erik J. Chaput
Erik J. Chaput, Ph.D., teaches American history at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and in the School of Continuing Education at Providence College. He is the author of The People’s Martyr: Thomas Wilson Dorr and His 1842 Rhode Island Rebellion (2013) and the editor of multiple digital letter collections on the Dorr Rebellion Project site (library.providence.edu/dorr).
Though Southern secessionists threatened to invade Washington, D.C., at numerous times during the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag did not fly in the nation’s capital at any point between 1861 and 1865. On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump did what 19th-century Confederates could not. There were scores of Confederate flags around the Capitol building on Jan. 6, but the photos of a man inside the building waving the battle flag were truly shocking.
By Malcolm Macdonald on January 22, 2021
Preston Brooks entered the United States Senate chamber with a gutta percha walking cane in hand. The cane stood approximately waist high next to the thirty-six-year-old South Carolinian. The head of the cane was topped with a gold knob.
Alongside Brooks were Laurence Keitt, a fellow South Carolinian, and Henry Edmundson. Keitt possessed a pistol. They waited for the gallery to clear that afternoon. The three had decided beforehand that no ladies be present. The Senate was not in session, but some of the senators worked at their desks.
When the gallery emptied, the three men strode down the aisle to a spot slightly behind the desk of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. The forty-five-year-old solon sat silent, absorbed in his writing. Brooks stepped alongside him. “I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.
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Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States in 2017 on a promise to Make America Great Again, beginning four years in office that changed America and how it was viewed around the world