The Southern Democrats demanded to keep fellow human beings in chains so they could produce cheaper products for their owners. Then, because the Dems couldn't get their way, they;
- seceded from the United States of America
- formed their own country
- printed their own money
- created un-American military uniforms
- built a small navy and a large army
- made their own flag
- elected their own President
- appointed their own Generals
- reinforced slavery in their own constitution
- one of their peaceful protesters assassinated the President of the United States
- .........and drove their states into utter destruction rather than surrender and rebuild.
After the war, they continued to have slavery but renamed it 'Share-Croppers,' which was outlawed by a Republican Congress.
History never recorded an apology for all those Dem acts, including murdering the President of the United States, Mr. Lincoln.
President Lincoln, a Republican President before his assassination, freed the slaves using the Emancipation Proclamation. The Dems denounced his actions and demanded that their fellow human beings be put back in chains.
But it doesn’t stop here.
The war's cost was catastrophic. Over 600,000 Americans died. The Democrat Confederacy's economy and infrastructure lay in ruins. Post-war, Southern legislatures—dominated by Democrats—quickly enacted "Black Codes" to restrict freedmen's rights, followed by the sharecropping system. Sharecropping trapped many Black (and poor white) families in cycles of debt and dependency on former plantation owners, functioning as "slavery by another name" through exploitative contracts, vagrancy laws, and violence.
Republican President Ulysses S. Grant passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to abolish slavery, grant citizenship, and protect voting rights. Southern Democrats largely opposed these measures and, after federal troops withdrew in 1877, regained control, instituting Jim Crow segregation, poll taxes, and disenfranchisement that lasted into the 20th century.
My position, and the one I will post on this site, is:
Long Version: ( My legal opinion)
"True reparations are legally and conceptually indistinguishable from court-ordered restitution for damages proximately caused by a perpetrator in the commission of a criminal offense. The historical crimes of chattel slavery, treason, and armed civil rebellion—perpetrated in furtherance of the demand to perpetuate the enslavement of fellow Americans—constitute grave offenses for which full restitution must be made. Such reparations are properly the obligation of the responsible perpetrator: the Democrat Party, as the political institution that led, defended, and institutionalized these evils. This restitutionary duty requires full compensation to the victims (and their descendants) for all measurable harms, losses, and damages resulting from those offenses, consistent with established principles of criminal and civil liability." Steve Eichler JD. Retired Attorney
Short Version:
"True reparations are no different from restitution for damages caused by a perpetrator in the commission of a criminal offense. The crimes of slavery, treason, and civil rebellion—driven by the demand to keep fellow Americans in chains—must be paid for by the perpetrator: the Democrat Party." Steve
So, I ask you,
“If reparations must be paid, then who is liable to pay them?”
Please share your answer in the comment section below.
Replies