Democrat Party Timeline of Ignominy

Major examples in chronological order of the Democrat Party's twisted evil history

Trail of Tears

The first Democrat President, Andrew Jackson (also his successor, Martin Van Buren), herded the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) into camps, tormented them, burned their homes, pillaged their belongings, and forced them to relocate west of the Mississippi. Thousands died along the way.

Tammany Hall

For eighty seven years the Society of St. Tammany, the Democrat Party political machine in New York City, ran the city like a third-world dictatorship using graft, corruption, and the threat of violence—perhaps most infamously under William M. "Boss" Tweed who was convicted in 1877 of stealing $25–$45 million from taxpayers through political corruption. (Later estimates ranged as high as $200 million, or $8 billion in current dollars.) Tammany Hall lasted until Democrat Mayor Jimmy Walker, facing corruption charges, was forced from office and fled to Europe in 1932. Republican reformer Fiorello Henry LaGuardia was elected mayor in 1934.

Fugitive Slave Act

Democrats passed the Fugitive Slave Act which stripped blacks—even free citizens who had never been slaves—of their right to representation by an attorney, the right to trial by jury, and the right to habeas corpus if they were merely accused of being a slave.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Democrats passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska to determine whether they would allow slavery. As a result, anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions flooded the territories to win the vote, leading to a bloody area-wide civil war. Disgusted by the passage of this legislation, free-soilers and anti-slavery members of the Whig and Democrat parties founded the Republican Party... to stop the spread of slavery and eventually abolish it.

The beating of Charles Sumner

After Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave an impassioned anti-slavery speech on the floor of the Senate, Democrat Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, feeling his state and his uncle had been insulted, confronted Sumner in the senate chamber and beat him nearly to death using a heavy cane with a sold gold head while a fellow Democrat with a gun prevented rescuers from intervening. Brooks struck the first blow before Sumner had a chance to rise from his seat and continued beating him after he was unconcious. It was three years before the senator could resume his duties. Republican Congressman Anson Burlingame from New York subsequently indicted Brooks for cowardice in a speech, causing Brooks to challenge him to a duel which Burlingame enthusiastically accepted... whereupon Brooks chickened out and refused to show.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Dred Scott, a slave, asked a U.S. Circuit Court to award him his freedom because he and his master had resided in a state (Illinois) and a territory (Wisconsin) where slavery was banned. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the ruling was twofold: one, that any person descended from Africans, whether slave or free, was not a citizen of the United States and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court; and two, that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in territory beyond the original thirteen colonies. The rulings were capricious, illogical, racist, and cruel, and the Dred Scott Decision is generally considered the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court. At the time the decision was made, the court comprised seven Democrats, one Republican, and one Whig. The final vote was 7–2, the Republican and Whig dissenting.

Civil War

Fearing the loss of their slaves after the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republicn president, the pro-slavery faction of the Democrat Party, comprising the majority and concentrated in the slave states, decided to secede from the union, precipitating the Civil War and resulting in 1,030,000 casualties including 670,000 deaths.

Assasination of Abraham Lincoln

On April 14, 1865, rabid Democrat and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot Republican President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head while the president was watching a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Ku Klux Klan

Disgruntled Democrats, upset about the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War and the granting of voting rights to freed slaves, formed an extremist group in Tennessee to further their political aims through violence and intimidation. The original group, led for a time by former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, petered out. Two later iterations of the group eventually spread throughout the South and even into northern states. The Tuskegee Institute estimates 3,446 black Republicans and 1,297 white Republicans were lynched by the KKK between 1882 and 1968.

13th Amendment

Congressional Republicans unanimously backed the 13th Amendment banning slavery, while 63 percent of Democrat senators and 78 percent of Democrat House members voted against it.

New Orleans raid on GOP

Democrats in the New Orleans government ordered police to raid an integrated meeting of Republicans, killing forty and injuring one hundred fifty.

President Andrew Johnson

Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln upon his assasination, vetoed an extension of the Freedman's Bureau which aided freed slaves and then vetoed the first civil rights act which was intended to grant citizenship to freed slaves (eventually accomplished by the 14th Amendment in spite of Johnson's opposition). Eager to send a message to "Radical Republicans," he also wanted to veto a bill to enfranchise blacks in the District of Columbia but the measure stalled in the Senate after passage by the House. (The measure was finally passed over Johnson's veto in 1867.)

40 acres and a mule

During Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's "March to the Sea" in 1865 he issued a Special Field Order (No.15) providing that land (and sometimes Army mules) be given to freed slaves. By June 1865 about 10,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres in Georgia and South Carolina. When Democrat Andrew Johnson ascended to the presidency after Lincoln's assasination, he countermanded Sherman's orders and returned the land to its previous white owners. On February 5, 1866, U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Republican from Pennsylvania, introduced legislation to implement “40 acres and a mule” as official policy, but the legislation was successfully opposed by Johnson.

14th Amendment

94 percent of Republican senators and 96 percent of Republican House members voted for the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans equal protection of the law. Every congressional Democrat voted against it.

Presidential impeachment

Angered by Democrat President Andrew Johnson's thwarting of congressional wishes regarding Reconstruction, the House impeached him on February 24, the first of only two U.S. presidents ever impeached (both Democrats). On May 16, after furious backroom dealing and promises from Johnson to various senators, the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.

Georgia expels blacks from state legislature

On September 3, twenty five black legislators in the Georgia legislature, all Republicans, were expelled by the Democrat majority on the grounds that the new state constitution did not guarantee blacks the right to hold office.

Opelousas, Louisiana

On September 28, when freed blacks rallied to stop an attack on a white Republican newspaper editor, white Democrats massacred three hundred of them.

1868 campaign motto

Democrats Horatio Seymour and Francis Blair ran for president and vice president, respectively, using the motto, "This Is A White Man's Country: Let White Men Rule."

15th Amendment

When Southern Democrats balked at implementing the 14th Amendment, Republicans in Congress, in near unanimity, passed the 15th Amendment guaranteeing blacks the right to vote. Every single Democrat voted against it.

Democrats seize Texas state government

On January 17, armed Democrats seized the Texas state government to prevent integration by Republicans.

Storming of Louisiana statehouse

Incensed by Republican Governor William Kellogg’s racially integrated administration, Democrats stormed the Louisiana statehouse on September 14, killing twenty seven people and commandeering the state government. The "White League" retreated when Republican President Ulysses S. Grant sent federal troops to intervene a few days later.

1875 Civil Rights Act

Guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, the legislation was signed by Republican President Ulysses S. Grant after being passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition.

Jim Crow

In response to civil rights laws enacted by Republicans during Reconstruction, Democrats at the local and state level began legislating de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy. These were called "Jim Crow" laws after a character designed to belittle and mock black intelligence, played in blackface by white actor Thomas D. Rice. Most of the gains made by blacks during Reconstruction were lost. They were still elected to local offices in the 1880s, but establishment Democrats kept passing more and more laws to restrict voter registration, voting, and ability to run for office, with the result that political participation by blacks and poor whites decreased. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy/comprehension tests, residency rules, and record-keeping requirements.

Anti-lynching legislation

Nearly 200 times in 86 years, Republicans in the House passed anti-lynching legislation, each time killed by Democrats in the Senate. Consequently, the United States Congress, to its shame, never did pass anti-lynching legislation. In 2005, a Republican-controlled Senate officially apologized for the failure.

Civil War vet's 1890 gravestone

Enforcement Act

Democrat President Grover Cleveland and a Democrat Congress repealed the Enforcement Act, which gave black voters federal protection. The law was originally written and proposed by Republican Senator Charles Sumner in 1870 and finally enacted in 1875 by a Republican Congress. Similar protection of civil rights did not return until passage of the remarkably similar 1964 Civil Rights Act... again over the opposition of Democrats.

Wilmington Insurrection of 1898

When a Republican mayor and biracial city council were elected in Wilmington, North Carolina, Democrat white supremacists attacked and destroyed the Daily Record, the state's only black-owned newspaper, and then rampaged through the city killing and rioting. An estimated 100 blacks were killed, more than 2,000 blacks subsequently moved out of the city permanently (turning Wilmington from a black majority to a white majority), the mayor and city council were forced to resign at gunpoint, and then were replaced by Democrats... the only recorded coup d'etat in U.S. history.

President Woodrow Wilson

Shortly after his inauguration, Democrat President Woodrow Wilson fired most of the African Americans who held posts within the federal government, re-segregated the Mail Service, re-segregated the Treasury Department, and then segregated the Navy which had always been integrated. This was "as far as possible from being a movement against the Negroes," said Wilson. "I sincerely believe it to be in their interest."

Birth of a Nation

Democrat President Woodrow Wilson invited his Cabinet and the entire U.S. Supreme Court to the executive mansion's first film presentation, a screening of D. W. Griffith's racist masterpiece, Birth of a Nation, which depicts "the Ku Klux Klan's heroic, post-Civil War struggle against the menace of emancipated blacks..." portrayed by white actors in black face.

Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill

Filibustering Senate Democrats killed a Republican bill passed by the House that made lynching a federal crime. (They killed it again in 1923 and 1924.)

"Klanbake convention"

The 1924 Democrat National Convention in New York was host to one of the largest Ku Klux Klan gatherings in American history. When a minority of delegates to the convention tried to condemn the Klan in the party's platform, the proposal was shot down by the overwhelming number of Klan supporters within the party. Outside the convention, the Klan mobilized a celebratory rally in a nearby New Jersey field that was marked by speakers spewing racial hatred, celebrations of their platform victory, and a cross burning.

Tea at the White House

Democrats erupted in nationwide protests when First Lady Lou Hoover, wife of Republican President Herbert Hoover, invited the wife of Republican congressman Oscar De Priest, a black man, to the White House for tea.

Abuse of Supreme Court by FDR

Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt appointed two well-known Southern segregationists to the Supreme Court, James Byrnes from South Carolina and former Ku Klux Klansman Hugo Black from Alabama who filibustered an anti-lynching bill as a senator and was an outspoken anti-Catholic. Not satisfied with merely nominating replacements for retirees, in 1937 Roosevelt proposed legislation that would add six justices to the court, a "court packing" scheme that would create a majority of Democrats favorable to his political agenda. The power grab fortunately failed at the time but was resurrected successfully by Barack Obama in 2013.

Roosevelt & Truman administrations

During the combined twenty years of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman administrations, Democrats stopped all civil rights legislation.

Judicial Procedures Reform Bill

Frequently called the "court packing plan," the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill was a scheme by Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt to add six more justices to the Supreme Court so he could pack the court with his own people and thereby control the court's decisions.

Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark 1954 United States Supreme Court ruling declaring separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. Two years later, still miffed, 97 Democrats in Congress condemned the decision and pledged to continue segregation.

Little Rock school integration

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock, Arkansas, public schools over the strenuous resistance of Democrat Governor Orval Faubus.

1957 Civil Rights Act

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill after it survived the longest one-man filibuster in Senate history, 24 hours 18 minutes by Democrat Senator Strom Thurmond. In the House, 90% of Republicans voted for the bill versus 52% of Democrats. In the Senate, 100% of Republicans voted for the bill versus 62% of Democrats.

1960 Civil Rights Act

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill after it survived a five-day filibuster by eighteen Senate Democrats.

1960 presidential election

Democrat John F. Kennedy stole the election from Republican Richard Nixon with a three-part crime spree: one, he broke into Nixon's campaign offices to steal incriminating information that was leaked to newspapers in the days before the election (foreshadowing Watergate twelve years later); two, he enlisted the help of his father's Mafia connections in stealing Illinois' electoral votes; and three, Lyndon Johnson's Democrat machine in Texas stuffed the ballot boxes with Kennedy votes while destroying Nixon votes. (45,000 disallowed Nixon votes in Democrat counties were destroyed by fire before they could be examined because officials said they had "no room for storage." Nixon lost Texas by 50,000 votes.)

Meeting of segregationists

A July 23 meeting of leading segregationists was held in Atlanta to organize opposition to the civil rights movement. In attendance were four state governors: Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, Orval Faubus of Arkansas, John Patterson of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi—all Democrats. Strategies discussed included using the White Citizens Council, a white supremacist organization, to mobilize political support for racial segregation.

1964 Civil Rights Act

Democrat President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill after former Ku Klux Klan "Exalted Cyclops" Robert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster and the votes of 22 other Senate Democrats (including Tennessee's Al Gore, Sr.) failed to scuttle the measure. In total, 82 percent of congressional Republicans voted for the bill versus only 66 percent of Democrats. After signing the bill and using deft news media spin to steal credit for what was essentially a Republican accomplishment (again), Johnson cynically said, "That'll keep the niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years."

MLK suicide letter

The Democrat administrations of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, with Attorney General Robert Kennedy acting as useful tool, instigated and maintained FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King and then tried to undermine his crediblity, culminating with an "anonymous" letter from the FBI threatening the civil rights leader with embarrassing exposures if he didn't commit suicide before accepting the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

Presidential impeachment

After the Starr Report showed that Democrat President Bill Clinton lied under oath during a deposition and obstructed justice during the subsequent investigation, the House impeached him on December 19, the second of only two U.S. presidents ever impeached (both Democrats). On February 12, 1999, the Senate voted 50-50 along party lines, well short of the two-thirds majority needed for conviction, with Democrats claiming perjury and obstruction did not rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

President Barack Obama

The Democrat Party nominated and successfully ran a man for president without bothering to ascertain whether he was constitutionally eligible for the office and in spite of the fact that his campaign engaged in election fraud to get on the ballot.

Obamacare

In the dead of night on the Sunday before Christmas 2009, the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, through the use of skulduggery, bribery, questionable appointees, election fraud, and arguably-unconstitutional legislative finagling, managed to glean the necessary 60 votes to pass H.R. 3590, a House bill originally intended to fine tune housing tax credits for the military. Senate Democrats gutted it of every single word (including the title) and replaced them with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The gutting was necessary to pretend the legislation originated in the House, as required by the Constitution. Then in 2010, the Democrat-controlled House, realizing any re-vote in the Senate would fail because Republican Scott Brown had replaced Democrat appointee Paul Kirk, and lacking the courage to go on the record voting for the Senate bill, considered simply "deeming" it passed without a vote. When legal experts informed her the tactic wouldn't be constitutional, Democrats started bribing recalcitrant Democrats and finally mustered a bare majority to pass the Senate bill (not one word of which orginated in the House, remember). Final result: undemocratically-enacted unconstitutionally-imposed federal government control of U.S. health care against the wishes of most Americans and without a single Republican vote.

Court packing

On November 21, 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unilaterally changed procedural rules written by Thomas Jefferson and followed by Senators of all political parties for over two centuries. The goal was to stop Republican filibustering of judicial nominees. This blatant power grab, reminiscent of Roosevelt's court packing attempt in 1937, enabled President Barack Obama to add three Democrat judges favorable to his political agenda to the eight-judge D.C. Circuit Court, the most important federal court after the Supreme Court.