Americans Fighting Has Been Around Since The Beginning Of The Republic

Divisive political rhetoric and demonstrations are not new

Posted on February 9, 2017 by Bob Livingston

Most Americans seem to believe we are experiencing a political divide like never before seen in America. Such a belief belies history. Sharp political divide and resulting demonstrations have been a part of the American body politic since the beginning.

In the early 1790s the nascent political parties, Federalists and anti-Federalists (later Jeffersonian Republicans), divided sharply over how to respond to the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars, with Federalists favoring allying with Great Britain and anti-Federalists favoring the French.

President George Washington issued a neutrality proclamation in May of 1793 over the protests of members of both parties. American merchants continued to trade with both England and France.

But as hostilities between England and France escalated the British began seizing American merchant vessels attempting to trade with France. After they had seized hundreds of ships and their cargo, Washington sent Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay to work out a treaty with British for the return of the ships and deal with some business left over from the American Revolutionary War that weren’t solved by the Treaty of Paris.

The terms Jay worked out fell short of Washington’s expectations and angered both political parties. The controversy over the treaty’s terms sent Congress behind closed doors for negotiations. The more Americans learned about the treaty’s terms the less they liked it.

When demonstrations opposing the treaty broke out they often included the chant:

“Damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won’t damn John Jay! Damn everyone who won’t stay up all night damning John Jay!”

Jay was burned in effigy during many demonstrations that included pushing and shoving. Secretary of State Alexander Hamilton was heckled when he appeared at a meeting in New York to explain the benefits of the treaty. Some in the crowd even threw stones.

Of course, the difference between those demonstrations and the ones we are seeing now is obvious. Those were grassroots demonstrations carried out by Americans who understood threats to liberty posed by government.

Today’s demonstrations are AstroTurf George Soros-funded and fueled riots that are drawing in useful idiot leftist (mostly) millennials and single-issue pro-baby-murder women from across the nation who know little about American civics and even less about liberty and who are advocating for totalitarian government intervention to overthrow a lawfully-elected president, throw our borders open to a host of Third World America-hating socialists and destroy liberty.

And the leftist never-Trumpers are essentially shouting:

Damn Donald Trump! Damn everyone who won’t damn Donald Trump! Damn everyone who won’t stay up all night damning Donald Trump!