Sunday Books & Culture - Nonfiction
Heather Cox Richardson's classic study of Wounded Knee has important lessons for our own age.
Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre
By Heather Cox Richardson
Gross gerrymandering, sky-high tariffs that punish working people, dehumanizing non-Europeans living in America, broken promises, and reckless political rhetoric.
America in 2025⁸, to be sure.
But it was also America during the latter third of the 19th century, and especially during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison.
Heather Cox Richardson, best-known today for her daily publication “Letters from an American,” is one of the country’s leading historians of the post-Civil War era and the American West. This book was not written as a critique of the Trump Administration — it was released in 2010 — but rather to explain how American politics led to the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee.
That story involves Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman and his brother John, President Harrison and his party’s quest to retain power by leveraging incoming states to the union to advantage his party, and the little-known back story of the Ghost Dance as well as the fear that it generated among some whites.
Most disturbingly, it covers how the government turned a needless, blood-thirsty massacre into the story of an heroic American victory.
It is dangerous, indeed wrong, to look at past events and draw lines to the present in a misguided belief that history is repeating itself. However, it is helpful to examine past events and come to appreciate that even in trying times such as the nation is living through, it’s not the first time that the nation has faced them.
Cox helps readers understand the horrible consequences that can emerge when we place power above people, and provides hope that even in the darkest times, we can learn — for a time — and move forward.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”