I’ve been brushing up on my American history and recently I’ve been learning about the reconstruction period after the civil war. I had known next to nothing about this time and was quite surprised to learn that for about a decade there was very little legal discrimination against blacks and blacks even held many elected offices. I can appreciate that given the times and the just finished war this would have been quite a change for the southern whites and that there would have been backlash’s from them in various ways, but I find it pretty shocking that having been in place for nearly a decade reconstruction and much of what the war was fought for was then thrown away so quickly and wasn’t fully realized again for almost another century. So my question to you folks in the southern US, both black and white, is what went wrong? What I’m most interested in is the dialectical processes, particularly the process of the whites in the south coming, or not coming, to see blacks as people worthy of equal rights. Why did this process take so long, up until the 1950’s and 60’s, after it having been law and a practical reality for nearly a decade after the war in the 1860’s and 70’s? And how did the north, which had no stomach for slavery during the war, find a stomach for Jim Crow laws over a decade after the war? 600,000 people were killed in this war after all, and many more were wounded including many amputees. Why did they give up on the ideals that to a significant extent led to the war starting in the first place? I know some of the high level factors and political tradeoffs that were made, and with the death of Lincoln the lack of visionary leadership to lead the country through the process, but what was going on in the minds of the individuals and within families? What made them give in to the high level dynamics and give up on reconstruction and accept the Jim Crow south?
A very complex topic, Grizzled. I'll just make one comment, for now. Part of the problem was that while Blacks were not slaves in the North, they were still widely discriminated against there. I think the people in the North that cared the most still cared, but the nation was exhausted from the horrific war, and those in the North that truly cared about civil rights for Blacks were, in my opinion, in a minority. What happened in the South is another story. Keep D&D Civil.
I think the whites were not given the rights to vote for a while, not sure what made the people in the north agree to let them vote again. My memory on this is fuzzy.
So politically it was a question of managing the moderates then? And with Lincoln gone and Andrew Johnson and then Grant as presidents the leadership wasn’t there. Here’s a supplementary question then. With the right leadership would the country have accepted reconstruction, or was it for other reasons unworkable at the time?
Well lets clear one thing... The civil war was not just about slavery per say.....although it is made out to be, but rather states rights and the fact that the northern states had become very industrialized with paid labor (albeit at a cheap rate) and the south had free labor through slavery and as a result a lot of resentment built up....among other things but somehow it has been morphed over time to be just about slavery. Now I'm not saying it was a good thing to have slavery and it was just cause to bring it to an end but it was not the sole purpose of the war. And what are civil rights anyway? Its sort of a dilluted term instilled by communists to bring about confusion, resentment, turmoil etc. Can anyone clear this question up? Fact: Did you know that there were more Americans killed in the civil war then ALL other domestic and foriegn wars combined that Americans fought in? that is truly an amazing stat in my mind...
historians have put it at 600,000 there were about 4 million who fought on both sides so 2 million would be a 50% casualty rate. http://www.civilwarhome.com/casualties.htm
Are you thinking total casualties perhaps, dead and wounded? As jo mama said, the death toll was around 600,000. Given that the country had about 30 million people at the time that’s a big number. The south had about 9 million people but 4 million of those were slaves, so there were roughly 5 million whites of which we’ll say that half were men. So of 2.5 million white southern men about 200,000 or close to 1 in 12 were killed in the war. In certain demographics this would have been much higher, of course. The south got destroyed and a generation of men was decimated. Maybe this is one of the reasons the old south was glorified and the old ways of thinking were held onto for so long? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_war
At the time slavery was major trigger for the war, although there were other underlying factors as well. The Abolitionist movement was strong and a number of Christian groups were actively opposing slavery. John Brown’s raid and execution was key rallying point and William Garrison’s The Liberator was a prominent anti-slavery newspaper that was published from 1930 until the end of the war in Massachusetts. It’s my understanding is that slavery was what had the masses up in arms against the south, that and the secession of the southern states.
I don't intend this to be rude. This is a very common idea these days but it's really not true at all. The Civil War was about states rights like NORML is about hemp clothing. It's a nice perhipheral arguement which lends support to the main point, but if weed didn't get you high, nobody'd care. My mother has a masters in American History. A few months ago I discussed this idea with her in relation to another arguement on another BBS. She was dumfounded that people actually still believe this. The war was about Slavery. Period. A reading of The Confederate Constitution should make this clear. Examine the 30 years war, which is credited as the reason that Protestants and Catholics learned to get along. This is primarily attributed to the incredible personal costs. When one has suffered personally, one becomes more willing to compromise. As far as the South and the continued racism, you need only look at the US in Vietnam and the USSR in Afghanistan. You can't force people to believe something, and trying often only embitters the people who are being forced. In both of these cases, the "intervention" worsened the problems they sought to fix. To put an exclamation point on the subject, here are the "Without Sanctuary" lynching photos previously posted here. If they don't disturb you you aren't human.
Basically The north care for a while. . then turned their backs on Blacks in the south . . . or made. . um . . political compromises that left blacks in the cold Like a wife letting her daughter be raped by her husband so that the husband won't beat the mother and they can have a peaceful home everyone wins. . . i mean . ..except the daughter but hell She is a 'MINOR'ity so who cares. . . everyone else is happy Rocket River maybe a bit harsh . . but I'm not the most forgiving person
This is interesting because on the one hand what you point out seems contradictory. If suffering makes one willing to compromise why didn’t the Vietnamese and the Afghanis compromise, and why didn’t the white southerners compromise? Making the blacks in the south free and educating them would have been the best solution for rebuilding the southern economy, so why did they resist the idea so strongly and for so long? I think you raise good examples, but what’s the difference between the two cases? Why do you get one response in one set of cases and a seemingly completely opposite response in another set of cases?
I hear ya, but … The north had a population then about equal to what Texas’ population is now, about 20 million. They lost 350,000 of their husbands, sons and brothers in that war, and a further 275,000 were injured, and injuries in this war were serious. There were lots of amputations. If Texas lost that many people in a war that, at least in the minds of the people, was about a principle so important it was worth fighting and dieing for, would it a mere 10 years later turn its back on the principle that all those men, their men, died for? Do you see my problem? I’m having problems connecting the dots on this one.
I see but . .sometimes the price of victory is high sometimes it is hollow If you and your wife battle over a principal . . .and seperate for a while even though you are right. . . and she even admits it when u get back to gether. . .. you may not deal with that situation i.e. You should have the right to have any friends you want even though she doesn't like your slaven doggish chauvinistic woman hating friend enough so that ya'll break up Even though . . . you win because she understands. . friends are friends that does not mean .. you bring him around her much in fact you may do it less than before Rocket River
I'm sorry for not being more clear. The 30 years war was a war of attrition with no clear winner. Everybody in Europe beat the crap out of everybody else, and when it was over all of the Countries were more or less still around is some form. The Vietnam & Afghanistan wars were very one sided. Despite the way that losses are portrayed for Russia & the USA, Afghan and NVA losses were 10x higher. It was "big brother" squishing the enemy. The Afghan and Vietnamese viewed it as a war of teritorial agression. Their very existance was at stake. Therefore; At the end of the war, the North had been beaten up. They won but they suffered doing it. They were therefore in a 30 years war state. They were willing to bend to avoid more war. The Confederacy no longer existed. Even though Grant and Lee were very cordial at Appomattox, southerners were in a state of mind that engendered bitterness. They were being told how to do things and their lives. This put them in the "occupied country" frame of mind. Perhaps another good example would be the Weimar Republic after WWI. Germany was pretty much intact, but had to give all sorts of concessions and the constant humiliation of their defeat was always present and they were generally a proud people. In order to deal with this they created all sorts of conspiracies and reasons, most notably the Dolchstoßlegende. The victor French, who'd suffered so more casualties than the Germans but were "victors" had nothing to be bitter about but much to miss. They only wanted to forget about the war. They built the Maginot Line, and promptly set about ignoring all things millitary while Hitler annexed 1/2 of Europe. The difference is the factor of bitterness combined with loss. The bitterness simmers darkens to hate and grows.
1. Grizzled, you give the North way too much credit in their distaste for slavery. They wanted to abolish slavery, but they weren't exactly these wonderful benefactors for the oppressed minority. We've had plenty of race-relations problems in the north as well. I'm not sure if they saw Jim Crow as a betrayal of their efforts in the Civil War at all. The blacks were still free after all. 2. I don't see why you say something "went wrong" with reconstruction. You can't go and decimate a country and then expect them to come around to your way of thinking in a decade. If there was a regression, it was only because Southern powers needed a little time to gather themselves and adjust to the new reality. It's not as though Southerners loved and respected their newly-freed black neighbors for a decade and then retrenched into a new racism. The attitude was the same, except that the war drew a big target on the back of blacks. Considering the enormous hurdle to race relations that existed at the time, I think we've made good progress in the last century. 3. On your additional question, I'm more of a Social Forces theorist than a Great Man type. Different leadership may have sped or slowed reconciliation, but there is no way short of the Second Coming that a leader could have built a racism-free South in the late 19th century.
A great post. The South was indeed viewing itself as an occupied power. It may not make a lot of sense from your Canadian perch, but if you grew up in the '50's in Texas, as I did, you would have heard stories about the Reconstruction days, as well as seeing the discrimination against Blacks, which was everywhere, if one chose to just see. Another great post. As I mentioned above, you have no idea just how oppressive it still was for Blacks in the South (and states like Alabama and Mississippi were worse than Texas) a few decades ago. Things aren't what they should be, but they are vastly improved. That is, what... 125 years after Reconstruction collapsed? A staggering thought. We are still dealing with the aftermath of our Civil War. And I agree with JV that a great leader would have had an almost impossible task dealing with the bitterness left from the Civil War in the South. Lincoln, I have no doubt, would have handled Reconstruction differently, had he lived, but I'm not sure it would have led to better conditions for Blacks in the South. It may have led to better conditions in the North for Blacks, however. Just how much they were discriminated in the North, before and after the Civil War, is frequently ignored. And Lincoln would have persued policies that would have left the South much less embittered, in my opinion, which could have improved conditions for Blacks more in the long term than the 10 years of Reconstruction. We'll never know. Keep D&D Civil.
