Since the GOP, in its efforts to prop up a game-show fascist, grift their supporters, and delegitimize democracy, is SO concerned about voter suppression, I thought I’d give them a history lesson on what it ACTUALLY looks like. Let’s head to Mitch’s home state of Kentucky, 1864.

This is Maj. Gen. Stephen Burbridge, also known as “The Butcher” -- and not because he was a star on one of those BBQ competition shows. Like 99 percent of Civil War officers, the Kentuckian had been a lawyer before the war -- but in 1864, he took the law into his own hands.

In the summer of 1864, as Kentucky reeled from Rebel raids, Lincoln gave Burbridge control of the state -- a job so vexing it literally drove Sherman insane. Martial law was declared, and The Butcher ordered that for every Union citizen killed, four “guerillas” would be shot.

One problem was not everyone agreed who was a guerilla. But Burbridge went further, throwing leading citizens in jail on charges about which the Lawyer in him must have said: “This bullshit will ONLY fly if I can rig the Supreme Court with two grossly under-qualified appointees.”

When the election rolled around, Burbridge stopped at nothing to ensure support for Lincoln (hey, when you’re running against McClellan, you pull out all the stops.) Burbridge threw newspaper editors and judges in jail -- even the state’s Lt. Gov, a former Union colonel.

Kentucky’s governor, Thomas Bramlette, had been a Lincoln ally but was increasingly angered by Burbridge’s actions (and, ahem, the recruitment of black Union soldiers). He wrote to D.C. that Burbridge was an “imbecile commander” with a “weak intellect and an overweening vanity.”

One Lincoln response was classic. “I can scarcely believe that Gen John B Huston has been arrested for no other offense than opposition to my re-election, if that had been deemed sufficient cause of arrest, I should have heard of more than one arrest in Kentucky on election day.”

But voter suppression wasn't The Butcher’s only misstep -- he also presided over “The Great Hog Swindle,” which SOUNDS like a charming 19th-century children’s story but actually involved forcing Kentucky farmers to sell pork to the Union Army at cut-rate prices.

Eventually in early 1865, Lincoln rescinded Burbridge’s orders and fired him, prompting his resignation from the army. An outcast after the war, Burbridge did what anyone shunned by Middle America would do: He moved to Brooklyn. And started a podcast, probably.

So as you find yourself asking questions like: ‘Wait, is that treason or just sore losing?” and “Have the Republicans ever even READ this Constitution they pretend to care so much about?” remember: None of this would have happened on The Butcher’s watch. For better or for worse.