Also it was because we didn’t do reconstruction, which was because the landowners were too strong.

And the landowners were too strong in the 1860s because of compromise in the 18th century, on account of their ancestors being too strong.

Actually, come to think of it, aren’t those the same people that elected Nixon, Reagan, and Bush?

Perhaps it’s not so much that history repeats itself as that we have had the same intractable problem for hundreds of years: aristocrats.