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This Day In History, July 8th, 2021 – “Hamburg Massacre”



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It was just 145 years ago today, July 8, 1876, when six members of the South Carolina National Guard, all African Americans, were attacked by an angry mob and killed. After the Civil War, the great question of how the U.S. should be rebuilt loomed in the thick smoke-filled air. Do we welcome back everyone with open arms, or, like the Radical Republicans wanted, a harsh sentence for a defeated enemy? In the end, under President Johnson, a southern democrat, the states were welcomed back with open arms, and many of the southern politicians who had voted for secession in 1861, regained their power.

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As Republicans were trying to make inroads into local southern politics, many people in the south did not like this, especially the idea that blacks were armed with weapons, something a former slave should just not be able to do. So, in the end, an armed group of people stormed the local guard post, killed two, and captured four others, which they tortured to death. This incident, being so late after the Civil War, brought to the public’s attention the failings of the Reconstruction Era, and soon the Republicans and the Union would loose total control in the south.

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