A different Reconstruction

[NapoleonXIV]

In 1868 Thaddeus Stevens informs Andrew Johnson that he has the votes necessary for impeachment. He offers a deal. Johnson must enforce the former slave's new voting rights and back the blacks elected with Northern bayonets, and he must end the southern aristocracy with land reform. All white freeholdings in the former Confederacy over 100 acres will be confiscated and redistributed to the former slaves. If Johnson supports these two measures he can keep his job. He does so and this becomes permanent US policy.

How would this change things in the coming years?

[wkwillis]

The Civil War restarts with the Northern bankers who owned all the mortgages on the plantations backing the Southern rebels instead of the Union.
Machiavelli used to say that a man would forgive the loss of his father sooner than the loss of his inheiritance. He had a point. People really get pissed when you steal their money.

[Raymann]

I don't know, the vast majority of Southerners have no love for the plantation holders as well. If the deal included a plan to give land to all landless Southerners (black and white) then it might have been meet with approval.

[andyh]

I agree with Raymann; it seems like it would be a very tough sell if it were to benefit freed blacks explicitly, even after the "last ditch" war exhaustion of the south. To what extent was land redistribution a feature of OTL Reconstruction? It sounds like a plan that would really alienate Americans, who are, for better or worse, accustomed to nothing of the sort. You might see uprisings against freedmen and carpetbaggers getting much worse, much more quickly. It might be impossible to implement land seizures without a military force, and of course it wouldn't be hard for Klan and pre-Klan types to terrify local blacks to such a degree that the whole thing fell apart from day one. It was hard enough to do what they did, with the lynchings, beatings, and tarring-and-featherings.

[DominusNovus]

Originally Posted by andyh

I agree with Raymann; it seems like it would be a very tough sell if it were to benefit freed blacks explicitly, even after the "last ditch" war exhaustion of the south. To what extent was land redistribution a feature of OTL Reconstruction? It sounds like a plan that would really alienate Americans, who are, for better or worse, accustomed to nothing of the sort. You might see uprisings against freedmen and carpetbaggers getting much worse, much more quickly. It might be impossible to implement land seizures without a military force, and of course it wouldn't be hard for Klan and pre-Klan types to terrify local blacks to such a degree that the whole thing fell apart from day one. It was hard enough to do what they did, with the lynchings, beatings, and tarring-and-featherings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/40_acres_and_a_mule

[NapoleonXIV]

OK, yes BUT;

remember that the plan AND the largely black governments elected at this time are being backed by the full might of the occupying Northern Army. The Klan, IIRC, was never more than a weak and rather disorganized criminal underground, not even real terrorists let alone an effective Resistance. And here they would be weaker yet, as they had no wealthy planters.