Letters from an American
· collected 2026-10-09 · by Heather Cox Richardson
commentary
On October 8, 1871, dry conditions and strong winds drove deadly fires through the Midwest.
asserted
conditions → drive → Midwest
The Peshtigo Fire in northeastern Wisconsin and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula burned more than 1.2 million acres (4,860 square kilometers) and 17 towns, claiming between 1,500 and 2,500 lives.
asserted
Fire → burn → lives
The Great Chicago Fire burned 3.3 square miles (8.6 square kilometers) of the city, destroying the wooden structures that made up the relatively new town, killed about 300 people, and left more than 100,000 people homeless.
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that → burn → people
The Chicago Fire is the one people remember.
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people → remember → ?
The difference is in part because Chicago was a city, easy for newspapers to cover, while the Peshtigo fire killed people in lumber camps and small towns.
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fire → cover → camps
But the Great Chicago Fire also told a political story that fit into an emerging narrative about the danger of organized labor.
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that → tell → labor
It was not clear, coming out of the Civil War, how Republicans would stand with regard to workers.
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Republicans → come → workers
After all, the U.S. government had fought the war to protect the right of every man to enjoy the fruits of his own labor.
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government → fight → labor
But immediately after the war, workers had started organizing to demand adjustments to the wartime financial policies that favored men with money.
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that → start → money
By 1866 the Democratic Party had begun to listen to them, and leaders called for rewriting the terms of the Civil War debt, which had been generous to investors in the days when U.S. bonds were a risky investment.
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bonds → begin → days
After the war, with the U.S. secure, the calculations changed, and Democrats charged that investors had gotten too good a deal.
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investors → change → deal
Republicans, horrified at the idea of changing the terms of a debt already incurred, added to the Fourteenth Amendment the clause saying, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
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validity → horrify → insurrection
They were also concerned when more than 60,000 people came together in August 1866 to launch the National Labor Union, calling for the government to level the playing field between workers and their employers.
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government → concern → workers
They asked for an eight-hour day, an end to monopolies, and cooperation between Black and white workers.
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They → ask → workers
In 1867, in what was almost certainly a misquoted comment, stories spread that Republican Benjamin Franklin Wade of Ohio had told an audience in Kansas that “property is not equally divided, and a more equal distribution of capital must be wrought out.
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distribution → misquote → capital
Also in 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which divided the ten unreconstructed states into five military districts and required new state constitutional conventions to rewrite the state constitutions.
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which → pass → constitutions
For the first time in history, the new law permitted Black men to vote for delegates to those conventions.
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law → permit → conventions
When former Confederates preferred to live under military rule rather than share political power with their Black neighbors, Congress amended the Military Reconstruction Act to permit the military to enroll voters.
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Congress → prefer → voters
In 1868, Congress passed and
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Congress → pass → 1868
then states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, protecting the right of all citizens to the equal protection of the laws.
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states → ratify → laws
In 1870, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, protecting Black male voting.
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states → pass → voting
And then, when white reactionaries organized as the Ku Klux Klan to keep Black men and white Republicans from voting for the constitutions the conventions had written, Congress created the Department of Justice to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members and protect Black rights in the South.
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Congress → organize → South
Attacks on Black political rights on grounds of race were now unconstitutional, and the federal government seemed prepared to back that principle up with the law.
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government → seem → law
So reactionary southerners took a new tack.
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southerners → take → tack
Beginning in 1871, they argued that they had no objection to their Black neighbors on racial grounds.
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they → begin → grounds
What they objected to, they said, was that these folks, newly out of enslavement, were poor.
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folks → object → enslavement
White leaders claimed that the South remained in a recession not because India and Egypt had taken over the global cotton market during the war, but because Black southerners were lazy and hoped to use their new political power to redistribute the wealth of white landowners into their own pockets.
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southerners → claim → pockets
When South Carolina voters put into office a majority-Black legislature, white South Carolinians railed against the Black voters “plundering” taxpayers.
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voters → put → taxpayers
One observer commented that “a proletariat Parliament has been constituted, the like of which could not be produced under the widest suffrage in any part of the world save in some of these Southern States.”
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like → comment → States
Democrats organized a “Tax-Payers’ Convention” to protest new taxes levied by the legislature.
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Democrats → organize → legislature
While Republicans were unwilling to bow to the Ku Klux Klan’s violence against their Black colleagues on racial grounds, this attack had legs, thanks, in part, to events in Europe.
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attack → bow → Europe
For two months in spring 1871, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, workers took over the city of Paris and established the Paris Commune.
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workers → take → Commune
American newspapers plastered details of the Commune on their front pages, describing it as a propertied American’s worst nightmare.
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newspapers → plaster → nightmare
They highlighted the murder of priests, the burning of the Tuileries Palace, and the bombing of buildings by women who lobbed burning bottles of newfangled petroleum through cellar windows.
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who → highlight → windows
American newspapers portrayed the Communards as a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy” who brought to life a chaotic world in which workers had taken over the government with a plan to confiscate all property and transfer all money, factories, and land to workers.
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workers → portray → workers
Republicans’ fear of workers grew.
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fear → grow → workers
Organized laborers “are agrarians, levelers, revolutionists, inciters of anarchy, and, in fact, promoters of indiscriminate pillage and murder,” the Boston Evening Transcript charged.
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Transcript → charge → pillage
The Philadelphia Inquirer insisted the redistribution of wealth through law appealed to poor, lazy, vicious men who would rather steal from the nation’s small farmers and mechanics than work themselves.
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who → insist → farmers
Scribner’s Monthly warned in italics: “the interference of ignorant labor with politics is dangerous to society.”
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interference → warn → society
Turning first against Black southerners, Republican newspapers began to claim that African Americans were radical levelers.
uncertain
Americans → turn → southerners
…and 15 more, not listed.
The Aporia
