After the civil war in the United States, President Lincoln was shot and his election opponent Andrew Johnson who was from the party of the south took over. At that time the candidate with the second highest number of votes became the Vice President.

Once Andrew Johnson took over he proceeded to pardon nearly every confederate. Not just the poor soldiers on the ground, but the land holding slave owners who instigated the war.

Those people regained power in the south after the compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction and the military occupation of the south.

Their legacy is a cancer that has rotted the US democracy from the inside out.

Our failure to root out the use of racism to cling to power has been a consistent theme in the failures of our democracy.

Edit: it goes even farther back to Bacon's rebellion as well. Back prior to he revolution when the ruling landowners began dividing indentured servants by race and treating them with different levels of privilege so they wouldn't unite against them again.