In that respect, the Klan and its sympathizers weren’t defeated - they had accomplished one of their goals.Īll too often, people tend to think the times in which they live as somehow unique in the human experience. Here, however, Meacham somewhat undercuts his argument by citing a drop in legal immigration caused by a racist 1924 law that forbade Asians from becoming citizens as a reason for the lowered tensions. It faded again through the quiet leadership of President Calvin Coolidge, who said in August 1924 that the Constitution defended the rights of all Americans, regardless of color. The Klan rose again after World War I because of the fear of communism and uncontrolled immigration. The Klan, Meacham writes, first gained prominence after the Civil War in the defeated Confederacy in reaction to black Americans gaining the rights long denied them, such as the right to vote, own property and not be a slave. Meacham shows how the Ku Klux Klan rose and fell and then rose and fell again, how fear and the compulsion to exploit that fear by manipulative leaders threatened to overcome those who refused to give in to it.

He employs all of those skills in The Soul of America, a thoroughly researched and smoothly written roundup of some of the worst parts of American history and how they were gradually overcome. That was a reason he was chosen to speak at the funeral of Barbara Bush, the wife of one of Meacham’s subjects, former President George H.W. Meacham has become one of America’s most earnest and thoughtful biographers and historians. During each period, America's better angels eventually won out.

Those advances, Meacham writes, came during the civil rights era of the 1960s, the fight against the anti-communist hysteria of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, and the efforts to raise the working class from the horrific tenements of the late 19th century. 'A tragic element of history is that every advance must contend with the forces of reaction.' If that weren't the case, right-wing populist attacks on immigrants and the widening mainstream wouldn't be so ferocious,' he writes. 'In the main, the America of the twenty-first century is, for all its shortcomings, freer and more accepting than it has ever been. Yet each time, Meacham writes, we have managed to overcome hatred and divisiveness. Politicians elected to lead have instead catered to our worst instincts and separated us by race, gender and religion. Racism and hatred have flourished fear and panic often prevailed.

Hard times have fallen on America often during our 242 years as a country, often bringing out the worst among many of us. Relax, America, author Jon Meacham tells his readers in The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (Random House, 414 pp., ★★★★ out of four). Watch Video: Opinion: Relax, America has been through worse

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