This commentary is by Bob Stannard of Manchester, an author, musician and former state legislator and lobbyist.
Some insurrections are better than others.
By the time you’re reading this, the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, violent insurrection against our democracy will have come and gone. We allow it to disappear completely at our peril.
America has experienced a vast variety of insurrections over its history; many, but not all, were justified. There is no justification for what happened on Jan. 6, because that insurrection was based on a lie that supporters of a defeated president wanted to believe was true.
The lie was that the election had been stolen. This lie is currently being perpetrated by the loser and many of his supporters still believe it to be true.
According to History.com, America had six violent insurrections, beginning with the Wilmington Insurrection of Nov, 10, 1898. “While it took the form of a race riot, spurred on by white supremacists, the Wilmington uprising was actually a calculated rebellion by a cabal of white business leaders and Democratic politicians intent on dissolving the city’s biracial, majority-Republican government. Once in power, the conspirators banished prominent Black leaders and their white allies from the city and joined with other North Carolina Democrats in instituting a wave of Jim Crow laws suppressing Black voting rights. Despite its illegality, state and federal officials ultimately allowed the power grab to proceed unchecked, leading many historians to cite the Wilmington insurrection as the only successful coup d’etat in American history.”
New York City Draft Riots occurred on July 18, 1863, protesting a corrupt draft that allowed the rich to buy their way out. The riots turned ugly when, feeling threatened by Blacks, they burned down a Black orphanage.
The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain was the result of coal mine owners’ attempt to thwart coal miners from forming a union. About 15,000 miners, many of whom were World War I vets, fought back against the thugs hired by the coal companies.
The Richmond Bread Riots of April 2, 1863, were orchestrated by women who were starving. The Civil War had a severe impact on food supplies and the women had had enough. The women marched down the streets, violently ransacking stores and warehouses.
“In 1946, a group of veterans and disgruntled citizens went to war with the local government of Athens, Tennessee. The small farming community had spent the 1940s dominated by a crooked political machine led by sheriff and legislator Paul Cantrell, who was known to rig elections in his favor through ballot stuffing and voter intimidation.
“Corruption ran rampant until 1945, when hundreds of young men returned to Athens fresh from the battlefields of World War II. After they experienced repeated harassment by law enforcement, the ex-GIs organized their own political party and ran several veterans for local office in the hopes of ousting Cantrell and his cronies once and for all.
“The ‘Battle of Athens’ unfolded during a tense Election Day on Aug. 1, 1946. When the veterans accused Cantrell of vote fraud, armed sheriff’s deputies began beating and detaining the GIs’ poll watchers, and one officer even shot an elderly voter in the back. After Cantrell and his deputies confiscated the ballot boxes and barricaded themselves inside the local jail, hundreds of ex-GIs armed themselves with high-powered rifles and laid siege to the building.
“The two sides traded fire throughout the night, leaving several men wounded, but the deputies finally surrendered after the veterans began lobbing dynamite at the jailhouse. When the votes were counted, the GI candidates were declared the winners and immediately sworn into office. Their upstart political party would go on to restructure local government and clean up much of the corruption in Athens.”
The failed Shay’s Rebellion of 1786 was instigated by farmers who were seeing their farms confiscated for failure to pay exorbitant taxes. Tax disputes later led to both the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s and Fries’s Rebellion in 1799.
Yes, Americans are a rebellious lot, but unlike the insurrection of Jan. 6, many of the past insurrections were justified. As previously stated, the insurrection of Jan. 6 was based on a lie.
Over the past year, we have witnessed one political party capitalize on the Big Lie and use that lie as the impetus to enact some of the most restrictive voting laws in history. Americans will soon be forced with the decision as to whether they are willing to fight for our democracy and free and fair elections. That would be a justifiable fight.
Americans can ill afford to sit back and do nothing, which appears to be our first course of action. We must strive to tap into, and understand, the anger that we all saw a year ago and channel that anger toward those who deserve it.
We should turn our attention to those who have repeatedly lied to us and stop them before it’s too late. Should we fail to do so, in all likelihood, we will lose what those who came before us fought so hard for: democracy.
