From the Confederacy to the Gilded Age: Manisha Sinha on the "sorry history" that inspires MAGA

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From the Confederacy to the Gilded Age: Manisha Sinha on the "sorry history" that inspires MAGA
Manisha Sinha spoke to Salon about Donald Trump's 19th-century vision and America's history of radical resistance

By Charles R. Davis
News Editor
Published April 4, 2025 5:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) America has always been like this: a place of immense contradiction, promise and disappointment, where noble, progressives ideals are embedded in a founding document written by men who purported to believe that all are created equal, even as most claimed the right to treat other human beings as property and to kill and displace the original tenants of the land. We helped defeat fascism in Europe, Americans can rightly claim; we also helped inspire Europe’s fascists, who looked longingly at the United States’ reactionary tradition of genocide and racial segregation.

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“It can be a depressing story if you look at the downfall and the kind of backlash and reaction to progressive change,” Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, said in an interview, “but it can also be inspiring to think about all the people who fought against injustices and inequality — and ultimately prevailed.”

Sinha merges the depressing and inspiring in her recounting of Reconstruction, when the U.S. emerged from a state of war as a flawed but budding multiracial democracy. Published on the eve of the 2024 election, “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republican: Reconstruction, 1860-1920,” is more relevant today than its author would likely prefer. It’s not just that the concept of a true democracy for all is under attack, but that those waging the contemporary assault are pointing to this Gilded Age of reaction as their model for everything from tariffs to imperial expansion.

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Salon: Are there any lessons you think from the example of the abolitionists or the suffragists that people trying to resist the current backlash could take inspiration from? Do you think they had tactics that could be useful for activists today?

Sinha: Oh yes, I think there are a lot of sort of legacies and examples that we can invoke and rely on. I really think that sometimes a lot of radical activists do not realize that, in order to achieve their objectives, you have to be able to fight on principle but be pragmatic in building broad coalitions, and that's what the abolitionists did. They were for the immediate abolition of slavery and for Black rights, but they formed alliances with anti-slavery moderates and politicians who didn't want to go beyond the non-expansion of slavery. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/04/from-the-confederacy-to-the-gilded-age-manisha-sinha-on-the-sorry-history-that-inspires-maga/