Policy of Spite

“Dedicated to the Chicago Convention,” by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 3, 1864. (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)

The South is different by virtue of identity politics.

You will hear people suggest that “identity politics” is something that leftist radical hippies invented in the Sixties. In fact, in his 1861 “Cornerstone Speech,” Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said,

“The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the [slavery] institution while it should last, and hence no argument can…