From the thesis: "This thesis contends that the recent electoral violence that arose around election cycles, voting rights, and democratic participation by non-White citizens is a familiar extremism. It is a historic terror, rooted in Reconstruction. After the Civil War, America underwent a period of fundamental change that many considered revolutionary to their existing identities, and so that looming change was met with counter-revolutionary force and terror. But while historic, it is not anachronistic.A similar violence arose during America's 'Second Reconstruction,' the Civil Rights movement, which featured many of the same issues of equality and increased access to democratic processes by non-White communities. Accordingly, this thesis deconstructs the electoral terror of Reconstruction into a set of common drivers that can then be used as a framework for understanding what motivates episodic, electoral violence in the United States. Put together, these drivers contextualize a particular extremism that is common to the 1860s, the 1960s, and the early 21st century."