Take a moment to watch, and then read Cooke’s words in the transcript below accentuated by the still images pulled out of the video stream, so you too can linger on them a little bit longer before you go back to the steady flow of your day.

Here’s the point

Our history books teach us that Abraham Lincoln and the North won the Civil War. True? Maybe.

Look closer at the events since then and one might think that the leaders of the South were actually the victors. In a very real and tangible way, both the assassin who shot Abraham Lincoln (John Wilkes Booth) and the Confederates who lost the Civil War are alive and well today, continuing their efforts to reverse the outcome of the Civil War. What happened in 1865 is still playing out in 2021, one hundred and fifty-six years later. A pretty impressive feat by the losing side!

What they accomplished

If this was a sales team in a company it would be the ultimate example of turning a “no” into a “yes”. The Union (North) defeated the Confederacy (South), that seems pretty clear.

General Grant beat them down, made them surrender at the Appomattox Court House in the state of Virginia. No question. It’s what happened after that surrender that is so impressive. For all intents and purposes, in the years that followed their defeat the Confederacy took over the federal government, dodged any repercussions for their actions, embedded their racist practices into the very fabric of American culture, kept Black Americans in a state of suppression and subjugation that was not unlike the slavery these seditionists had fought to uphold, and then memorialized their leaders with monuments across the country so that the celebration continues to this day. The flag of the Confederacy flies proudly across America at this moment.

Sounds like a pretty clear victory for the Southern Slave Owners.

We are taught that Lincoln’s embrace of the losers in that war is part of what makes America great. Country over party. Come together and heal. Unity. (echoes of recent President Biden statements?)  At the risk of making a wild comparison with WWII which may be problematic due to the severity of the crime, it is instructive to ask if there was ever a movement by ex-Nazi soldiers to erect statues of Hitler and Goebbels around Germany, England and in the United States. It sounds crazy. They lost, right?

One might ask, where is the line between facing our demons and letting them run amok?

From the Civil War to Trump, it has always been about race. This was and still is a battle between white supremacists who stand for the subjugation of anything “other” versus those who believe in equality and justice for all.

What separates these events?
156 years of virulent, racist persecution.

Just that.

Why this matters right now

Young Americans are struggling to come to grips with the deep-seated issues that our country is facing.

Across the ideological spectrum, citizens are becoming more inclusive, more diverse, more interested in every human being having a shot at the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Immigration has long been the source of talent and innovation for the United States, an engine of ambition that is certainly one of the top reasons we hold such a prominent position among nations around the world. The growing populations of black and brown populations in the country are demanding representation and waking up to the immense collective power they have.

But despite being on the wrong side of history, the white supremacist, racist infrastructure across all layers of our society continue to hold and wield great power.

A majority of Americans say race discrimination is a big problem in the U.S. and have been forced to see our country in a mirror in recent years, to face realities about our past of which we, quite frankly, have paid less attention to than we should have. Since WWII, many people’s lives were comfortable enough to take certain things for granted, sliding into complacency and forget some of the struggles of the past.

And that is the powerful message of this hard-hitting video by Matthew Cooke. We not only need to remind ourselves of our past often, we need to concretely link events in our past to moments happening right now – to better understand what is happening around us and more importantly to help us all make collective decisions that will avoid mistakes of the past.

To help expand the reach of this lesson, we felt compelled to present to our readers a summary, a transcript, and the video itself. We hope you will spend a few minutes to think about what this means in your daily life, and then share your thoughts in your networks. Why? So you can do your part in standing for a stronger democracy, where we face our mistakes, right wrongs, and move together towards a more equitable future.

5 things to remember from this video:

1. President Andrew Johnson, the successor after Lincoln’s assassination, delayed and derailed any legal actions against Confederate leaders, blocked legislation that either protected Black America or hurt the racist white and Southern power brokers, and then became the first president to be impeached but escaped conviction in the Senate.
2. In 1865, the judge who was presiding over the impending prosecution of Confederate leaders issued a warning: failure to convict would embolden future rebellions and more acts of treason. Which of course happened because the trials never moved forward. By the way, the charges against the Confederate leaders included “to stir, move and incite insurrection rebellion and war against the United States of America.”
3. Abraham Lincoln’s choice of Andrew Johnson for Vice President backfired. Lincoln, in the hopes of unifying a divided country, had intentionally picked a Southerner. Lincoln was playing nice, striving for a bipartisan outcome, placing his allegiance to country over that of his political party.
4. What a powerful paragraph: “And so now we see today, rising from the boneyards of America’s unatoned sins, Marjorie Taylor Green, a terrorist sympathizer who signaled approval for political assassinations, who disparages Jews and Muslims, who publicly harasses child survivors of school shootings which she claims are just conspiracies to steal her guns, who Republicans elected into our Congress and Republican leadership rewarded with a position on the Education and Labor Committee. These people are not only uninterested in unity. They openly embrace political violence. This is not white privilege. It’s our recurring white nightmare haunting us century after century with their suicidal fantasy that nobody really belongs here but them.”
5.  “Unscrupulous moderates” have been apologists and not-always-silent supporters of white supremacists ever since. Will we once again let this dangerously divisive subset of our population go on the offensive with impunity? Again?

Here is the full transcript for those who want to read along, pause on a specific idea, or pull out personally impactful excerpts to share with your family and friends.

We start with the words of Frederick Douglass

“America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. “

Those were the words of Frederick Douglass. Former slave turned national leader for the abolition of slavery, whose opinion president Abraham Lincoln said was the most important in the nation. A month before the end of the Civil War Lincoln called for the union to honor black Americans with the right to vote. And three days later he was shot and killed by the Confederate terrorist John Wilkes Booth.

Now Lincoln had picked a southerner, Andrew Johnson, as his vice president in the hopes of unifying a divided country. When Johnson took over the presidency he was supposed to oversee the prosecutions of 39 Confederate leaders responsible for the bloodiest war in US history that the South thought was a righteous rebellion… to protect slavery.

Judge John C. Underwood presided over the case and he was furious that Confederate leaders with hands dripping with the blood of our slaughtered innocents and martyred precedent were still at large. Judge Underwood’s court issued a warning: failure to convict would embolden future rebellions and more acts of treason. He spoke to the jury directly and he said, “it’s for you to teach them that those who sow the wind must reap the whirlwind. That clemency and mercy to them would be cruelty and murder to the innocent and unborn.”

Did anyone get held accountable?

Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Southern shadow president Jefferson Davis faced capital punishment, if they were to be found guilty.

The charge was being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil to subvert and to stir, move and incite insurrection rebellion and war against the United States of America. But there were countless delays. President Johnson was protesting against including black jurists. And one month before the end of his term, Johnson just drops all the charges. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and 37 other Confederate leaders just walk away.

In fact, the only American found guilty of treason during the civil war was John Brown, an abolitionist who fought to end slavery. And for that Brown was hanged for the crime of treason against Virginia and witnesses to his hanging were none other than General Robert E. Lee and John Wilkes Booth. For General Lee and the Confederates, there’d be no convictions. And what happened next? Northern US congressmen don’t want to seat Confederates or their sympathizers in Congress. They want a Union military presence in the Southern States to maintain law and order, and they want to pass protections for Black America. But President Johnson vetoes those protections and fires one of his so-called radical cabinet members who agrees with them. And as a result, Johnson is the first president to be impeached, but he escapes conviction in the Senate. And so reconstruction and reconciliation are compromised and crippled. Statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are built to commemorate white supremacy and treason and myths around state’s rights and Southern pride live on as a transparent cover for the shame of an ideology of extreme brutality and delusional supremacy.

Here it comes again

And that culture of the Confederacy rises again and again. Anti-democratic. Anti-science. Anti-Black,  Anti-Brown, Anti-immigrant, Anti-everything and anything that isn’t their clan. And century after century, so-called white moderates find unscrupulous reasons to accommodate these white supremacists for their own self-interest, for their lack of courage. And Black America, Native America, everybody else be damned.

And so now we see today, rising from the boneyards of America’s unatoned sins, Marjorie Taylor Green, a terrorist sympathizer who signaled approval for political assassinations, who disparages Jews and Muslims, who publicly harasses child survivors of school shootings, which she claims are just conspiracies to steal her guns, who Republicans elected into our Congress and Republican leadership rewarded with a position on the Education and Labor Committee. These people are not only uninterested in unity. They openly embrace political violence. This is not white privilege. It’s our recurring white nightmare haunting us century after century with their suicidal fantasy that nobody really belongs here but them.

What should we do now?

147 Congress members committed treason when they voted to overthrow our democracy.

147 Congress members now claim with forked tongues to have only represented the horns that welcomed their lies. Now, those 147 traitors who made every effort to subvert, stir, move and incite insurrection and rebellion against our country must be expelled from public office, tried and convicted in a court of law. Their sponsors, enablers, and promoters must all face boycotts and cancellations and be hauled into court on charges of sedition for the millions of descendants of African slaves and the survivors of the Native American holocaust. For every citizen of our migrant nation, who believes in equality for all people, it is for you to teach them that those who sow the wind must reap the whirlwind. That clemency and mercy to them would be cruelty and murder to the innocent and unborn.

Because …

In the words of Frederick Douglass: “If this war is to be forgotten, I ask in the name of all things sacred. What shall men remember? We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the Republic.”

Take a moment

A video can go by pretty quickly. When you look deeper, great learning can be had.  And the more we all know, together, the more we will be living in the same reality.

As Matthew Cooke succinctly put it: Trump-Republicans are the Modern Confederates: Let us not repeat 150-year old mistakes. In a quirky feat of time travel, today’s Republicans may actually be the unconvicted Confederate war criminals from 1865.

Will we punish them this time around?

Video Author Matthew Cooke produces videos with survivors tips, pressing calls to action, comedy news and best practices for a worthwhile visit to the tiny blue planet. His work includes Oscar Nominated Documentary Producer + Editor of DELIVER US FROM EVIL and HBO’S TEENAGE PAPARAZZO (Adrian Grenier) Writer-Director / Narrator of HOW TO MAKE MONEY SELLING DRUGS (Eminem, 50 Cent, Woody Harrelson, Susan Sarandon) Comedy Writer / Dramatic Actor / Kung Fu Enthusiast / Bug on Rock in Void.