Saturday, April 6, 2019
1872 Presidential Election
Toni Morrison’s Beloved took place in 1873, the earlier stages of the Reconstruction Era. In the 1872 presidential election, Republican Ulysses S. Grant easily won re-election over Horace Greeley, who was the only candidate to win electoral votes but die before the votes were officially casted. In addition, one of the most interesting third parties in American history nominated a woman, Victoria Woodhull, even though women could not vote at the time, with an African-American, Fredrick Douglass. I highly suggest that you guys watch this video https://youtu.be/q4Nuoh_cDGE about the election because it is only five minutes but will broaden your knowledge in the state of politics in the novel’s setting.
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This time period is actually a very interesting period of the Reconstruction Era. Originally under President Lincoln, it was a much more progressive program. It focused on integrating slaves properly into society, allow them to participate in elections and politics, and even attempted to re-distribute land to these freed African Americans. But during Grant's presidency, many of these programs were dropped and allowed for discriminatory things such as sharecropping and Jim Crow Laws to develop. As a result, even though they were freed, African Americans were still lacked many human rights, and this climate is clearly shown so far throughout the novel.
This is such an interesting video. This is quite a progressive and monumental election! Having no knowledge of this until now, I thought the 2016 presidential election was crazy! A few comments that stuck out to me during the video: it was ridiculous a journalist was nominated president, which also goes along with the circumstances like today that you don't have to be a politician to run (and win) in a presidential election.. and Greely was thought to be radical due to socialism and prohibition and VEGETARIANISM. I think that's funny that was thought of such a radical idea. I wonder what people in 1872 would think of veganism today.
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