Ideal American Reconstruction

[Father Maryland]

The difference is the USA won their independence and the CSA lost and got consigned to the circular filing cabinet of history.

Err you might as well say the difference between the US and the Nazi's in WW2 was that the US won.

The CSA was a fundamentally evil state that whose entire reason for existing was fear that

A) Thanks to population growth in the "Free States" the South no longer dominated Congress and the POTUS elections thanks to it's slaves.
B) They were afraid that the election of the Republicans meant they would no longer be able to spread slavery to all the territories (and ideally all of he "Free States" as well) and preserve the institution of chattel slavery forever. Not even fear Lincoln would outright abolish slavery. Just fear that the Republicans wouldn't let them spread slavery everywhere and potentially conquer large parts of Latin America to spread slavery there too.

The US did terrible things during the war and terrible things before and after. But it's entire reason for existence wasn't preserving and slavery as far as possible forever. The same way Nazi Germany was fundamentally founded to allow Germany to conquer vast swathes of Europe and genocide 99 percent of the populace (at least at a point in history where that was now regarded as being evil in every way)

If the CSA had won a substantial portion of the members of this board might instead be slaves even to this day. In the same way that if Nazi Germany won a substantial portion of the membership of this board would be dead or never born because their parents/grandparents were starved/shot/gassed/beaten to death or otherwise horribly murdered.

And to add to that if the CSA hadn't seceded the South would when combined with northern Doughfaces have been able to preserve slavery for an unknown amount of time and even spread it to some territories as a compromise. They would have been able to prevent the Lincoln Administration from doing much.

The US has done some fucked up things but it was

 

[BELFAST]

Err you might as well say the difference between the US and the Nazi's in WW2 was that the US won.

Evil or not.
The only thing that matters is not losing a war of independence.
WW2 between Germany and the USA was not about independence for the USA or Germany.
There was zero chance of Germany invading the USA except in fiction like the man in the high castle.

 

[Mikestone8]

All of that sounds good. If you really want to ensure that the backs of the planter class is broken, you should also have especially those like Sherman do much more damage (I'm talking no mercy whatsoever to the Confederate war machine). That way, those who supported secession will never again prosper and thus leaving the path open for the freedmen and the poor whites to fill in the political power gap

If the planter class has been destroyed [1], who exactly would freedmen and poor whites be united *against*?

Anyway, why on earth should anybody *bother*? Reconstruction made a kind of sense when there was fear of having disloyal elements in control of the Southern States. Once if was clear that the vastmajority had accepted reunion and were no longer a menace to anything that mattered, the whole business became an obvious waste of effort. Which is why no one troubled to take the matter up again for the better part of a century.

[1] Completely pointless, as they lost power anyway in most Southern States within a generation or so. Yet the new regimes were no less racist than the old.

 

[Father Maryland]

Evil or not.
The only thing that matters is not losing a war of independence.
WW2 between Germany and the USA was not about independence for the USA or Germany.
There was zero chance of Germany invading the USA except in fiction like the man in the high castle.

You stated it was ironic to treat the CSA as rebels and traitors when the US had seceded from the Brits. I pointed out that their is a difference in terms of morality of the reason for secession. In the US's case it was the fact that the US was governed by Britain without having any representation in Parliament and Parliament was increasingly try to take power in various ways from the colonies that had their own governments. In the CSA they were rebelling because of two simple facts

1) The South had representation in Congress. Frankly thanks to the 3/5ths compromise the South actually had considerably more representation then it actually should have. They effectively dominated both Congress and elections for POTUS. They seceded because they lost an election and population growth in the North meant that the South no longer completely dominated the US government and could no longer push laws that limited the states rights of the Northern states to regulate whether or not slavery was legal in their state and laws regarding accused escaped slaves.
2) They seceded because with the Election of Lincoln they now might not be able to extend slavery to all the territories of the US extending and preserving slavery forever. A fair number of the Fire Eaters who pushed for secession dreamt of going even further. Conquering or buying up Mexico and the Spanish territories in the Caribbean (such as Cuba).

So they decided to secede and launched a massive war because they lost a single fracking election and because now they might not be able to expand slavery to all the territories and new states and potentially even further into the Caribbean and Latin America. Lincoln was in no way planning on abolishing slavery outright when elected and the majority of Republicans opposed outright forced abolition. And frankly with Northern Doughface Democrats they could have stopped nearly any of Lincoln's legislation and lock up the government to make the Lincoln administration powerless until the next election when they might win.

In your situation morally the CSA was the British and the Union the Irish.

And strictly speaking the US went to war with Nazi Germany because Nazi Germany declared war on the US first immediately after Germany's ally Japan had launched a sneak attack which killed thousands of Americans before any declaration of war. Just as strictly speaking the ACW was launched by the South firing the first shots (and aided in their secession by out and out traitors like Buchanan's sec of War Floyd.)

Why exactly does morality not matter at in terms of sides in a independence war but matter in other wars.

And Hitler did at least vaguely plan for a war against the US say 20 years after conquering Europe and corralling all of it's strength. That was in Mein Kamph. And since he did either temporarily suceed or try to do much of what was in it it's reasonable to assume his somewhat vague plans for the US might be attempted in some form. While a un supported amphibious invasion of the US was virtually impossible by that point the Germans might very well have had Nukes and the Nazi's might have been crazy enough to try and launch a large scale nuclear sneak attack.

And frankly the US would have been stupid to do nothing as the Nazi's conquered almost all of Europe (and potentially those European nation's vast colonial empires and navies. Combined with all of the industry of Europe and the resources of both the East and the large segments of those colonial empires Germany would have been a massive threat to the US.) And while it might not have been a cause for the US fighting the war if the Germans had suceeded in Europe they would have killed untold millions. In that scenario the OTL Holocaust would be but a small fraction of the actual dead as the Nazi's slaughtered 90 percent of the Pre war Polish population, every Roma/Jew/Mentally ill/disabled/communist/social democrat, and a vast vast portion of the populace of the European part of the Soviet Union.

 

[Father Maryland]

If the planter class has been destroyed [1], who exactly would freedmen and poor whites be united *against*?

Anyway, why on earth should anybody *bother*? Reconstruction made a kind of sense when there was fear of having disloyal elements in control of the Southern States. Once if was clear that the vastmajority had accepted reunion and were no longer a menace to anything that mattered, the whole business became an obvious waste of effort. Which is why no one troubled to take the matter up again for the better part of a century.

[1] Completely pointless, as they lost power anyway in most Southern States within a generation or so. Yet the new regimes were no less racist than the old.

At least theoretically you can at least partially unite a people against enemies long gone (The Soviets for example against Tsarists, Kulaks, the Nazis even to this day, and the like.)

 

[marktaha]

Utterly obliterate the Southern Planter Class. Take not only the slaves but the land too. Disenfranchise former Confederate officials. However, take a reconciliatory approach with the poor Whites. Build up Southern infrastructure and industry, and give land not only to freed slaves but also to the aforementioned poor Whites, having at least a critical mass of them on your side is the only way that this type of radical reconstruction would ever work.

Expropriation is theft. My solution would involve a colourblind franchise throughout the USA for all elections.

 

[BELFAST]

You stated it was ironic to treat the CSA as rebels and traitors when the US had seceded from the Brits. I pointed out that their is a difference in terms of morality of the reason for secession. In the US's case it was the fact that the US was governed by Britain without having any representation in Parliament and Parliament was increasingly try to take power in various ways from the colonies that had their own governments. In the CSA they were rebelling because of two simple facts

I do not think it matters in war or politics who is good or evil matters only who wins and who loses.

Realpolitik - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sir Humphry the master of realpolitik and man understands that morality has no place in politics or war.

Morality is best left to Sunday school or religious studies etc.

 

[Father Maryland]

I do not think it matters in war or politics who is good or evil matters only who wins and who loses.

Realpolitik - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sir Humphry the master of realpolitik and man understands that morality has no place in politics or war.

Morality is best left to Sunday school or religious studies etc.

That's not real politick. For the US their is a pretty massive difference for it's future and security if the Nazi's completely conquer Europe. Their it's real politick to fight them and supply others that do.

The CSA was an evil cause. You can't have half a country secede just because they lose a single election. If you do democracy effectively dies as it proves incapable of actually working. You can't let half the country secede also because now they think they won't be able to expand the right to own other human beings to the entire country.

 

[Father Maryland]

Expropriation is theft. My solution would involve a colourblind franchise throughout the USA for all elections.

So was slavery. You're stealing the labor of a huge number of people who will work brutally hard and long hours for their entire lives without getting a cent. As will their children and their children's children. A southern Plantation is fundamentally built on the back of it's enslaved work force. The slaves residing on a plantation are the ones that built it and keeps it prosperous (or at least their parents did and they just continue in the same role). I don't think it's right (or good for the country in the long run to just do what we did OTL. Basically free people from official chattel slavery who'd worked for free brutally hard for their entire lives for free and then just tell them "Hey you're free but now completely and totally broke and pretty much you're only option is to become a sharecropper for your former owner in a situation where he will basically continue to get the vast majority of whatever you've grown through the sweat of you're children and you're childrens children." and then put "Vagrancy laws" in place that basically meant you couldn't move or if you weren't officially employed you could be arrested and charged with vagrancy. You would then recieve a nominal trial and within about five minutes an all white jury would vote to convict and the judge will sentence you to five years of hard labor. And then your former antebellum owner can then cheaply buy the contract (with all the money paid for the contract going into the pockets of local white officials or the county treasury) and legally force you to work for free for five goddamned years. And if you say try to escape you will be arrested and sentenced to say another ten years. And because the contract owner doesn't nominally own you for life he doesn't have to worry as much about keeping you alive to work as long as possible. So he can make you work even more brutally hard quite often to the point that you die.

Slavery was theft plain and simple. The right thing to do after the civil war would have been to confiscate the land of large planters, leading secessionists, members of the CSA government, and such and distribute them at least partially to former slaves (among others). It seems fundamentally wrong on a whole lot of levels to say take a man who has been a slave for his entire life working brutally hard and never earning a cent while earning a lot of money for his owner. Only to then formally "free him" and say "You own literally nothing at all whatsoever meanwhile the guy who made you work for him for forty long brutal years gets to keep everything he owns including all the property he bought using the profits earned from making you work for forty damned years and potentially literally selling your wife and children so you will never see them again. You're free to starve with nothing despite decades of hard work."

 

[BELFAST]

So was slavery. You're stealing the labor of a huge number of people who will work brutally hard and long hours for their entire lives without getting a cent. As will their children and their children's children. A southern Plantation is fundamentally built on the back of it's enslaved work force. The slaves residing on a plantation are the ones that built it and keeps it prosperous (or at least their parents did and they just continue in the same role). I don't think it's right (or good for the country in the long run to just do what we did OTL. Basically free people from official chattel slavery who'd worked for free brutally hard for their entire lives for free and then just tell them "Hey you're free but now completely and totally broke and pretty much you're only option is to become a sharecropper for your former owner in a situation where he will basically continue to get the vast majority of whatever you've grown through the sweat of you're children and you're childrens children." and then put "Vagrancy laws" in place that basically meant you couldn't move or if you weren't officially employed you could be arrested and charged with vagrancy. You would then recieve a nominal trial and within about five minutes an all white jury would vote to convict and the judge will sentence you to five years of hard labor. And then your former antebellum owner can then cheaply buy the contract (with all the money paid for the contract going into the pockets of local white officials or the county treasury) and legally force you to work for free for five goddamned years. And if you say try to escape you will be arrested and sentenced to say another ten years. And because the contract owner doesn't nominally own you for life he doesn't have to worry as much about keeping you alive to work as long as possible. So he can make you work even more brutally hard quite often to the point that you die.

Slavery was theft plain and simple. The right thing to do after the civil war would have been to confiscate the land of large planters, leading secessionists, members of the CSA government, and such and distribute them at least partially to former slaves (among others). It seems fundamentally wrong on a whole lot of levels to say take a man who has been a slave for his entire life working brutally hard and never earning a cent while earning a lot of money for his owner. Only to then formally "free him" and say "You own literally nothing at all whatsoever meanwhile the guy who made you work for him for forty long brutal years gets to keep everything he owns including all the property he bought using the profits earned from making you work for forty damned years and potentially literally selling your wife and children so you will never see them again. You're free to starve with nothing despite decades of hard work."

You are correct. Slavery and the sharecrop /company store/convict labour system was morally bankrupt.
That kind of thing should have been stopped at the time.
The federal government was not and is not a moral organisation. The rights of former slaves and punishing plantation owners etc were not important enough for them to do much about it at the time.

 

[Father Maryland]

You are correct. Slavery and the sharecrop /company store/convict labour system was morally bankrupt.
That kind of thing should have been stopped at the time.
The federal government was not and is not a moral organisation. The rights of former slaves and punishing plantation owners etc were not important enough for them to do much about it at the time.

Literally the entire point of this thread is " What should have been done?: Not " what is the easiest thing to do?"

Your literally missing the point of all this.

By your logic you could argue that say preventing the elderly and disabled isn't important enough for the Federal government to do anything about. Or that ACW veterans who'd lost a limb during the war werent important enough for the Federal government to purchase prosthetic limbs for.

 

[BELFAST]

Literally the entire point of this thread is " What should have been done?: Not " what is the easiest thing to do?"

Your literally missing the point of all this.

By your logic you could argue that say preventing the elderly and disabled isn't important enough for the Federal government to do anything about. Or that ACW veterans who'd lost a limb during the war werent important enough for the Federal government to purchase prosthetic limbs for.

I got the point and said that I agreed with you about land distribution and the banishing of the planter classes.
My point was there could be consequences to a change in policy and if not carefully done could result in the southern states rebelling again within a generation.
Preventing the elderly and disabled? I do not understand that one. typo?
I not sure who provided prosthetic limbs in the union. In the former CSA, they were provided by state governments. Post civil war the biggest line item in the budget of the former CSA states was the purchase of prosthetic limbs.

The question is what would the ideal have been.
The idea would have been civil rights for formers slaves and equal opportunity with no jim crow laws. Also ensuring that no state ever thinks of leaving the union again.
That is the ideal, how practical or possible it was at the time is another matter.

 

[Major Major]

In my novel the entire Presidential succession in April 1865 was wiped out (along with Seward). The new government carried out sweeping measures of retaliation.

1) All senior secesh officials were imprisoned under emergency law, without trials, until they died.

2) All former less senior secesh officers and officials, and other potential leaders of insurrection, were sent to War Department Corrective Labor camps in Alaska.

3) The former secesh states (except for Tennessee, which had been readmitted) were kept under military rule, enforced by United States Colored Troops.

4) Any semblance of resistance, even supposedly innocuous things as prayer meetings, was broken up and the perpetrators hanged or shot after court-martial, or dispatched to the War Department corrective labor camps in Alaska.

5) Whites were forbidden from obtaining agricultural implements or even seed. Many died in famines.

6) All industrial establishments were destroyed, or shipped north. New ones were built by the Freedmens' Bureau for formerly enslaved persons only.

7) All plantations were confiscated, reserved for formerly enslaved persons to settle as small farmholdings.

8) Whites were forbidden education. (And education for the formerly enslaved persons of color was ineffective, but that was Gilded Age style corruption.)

9) The names of states and cities were obliterated. This went so far as rewriting Lincoln's statement after the fall of that secesh fortress the same day as Gettysburg: "The Missouri flows unvexed to the sea."

I realize that this may have been inadequate, but some said it had to be done.

(Summary of novel reinstated. Buy it . . . please?)

 

[Father Maryland]

I got the point and said that I agreed with you about land distribution and the banishing of the planter classes.
My point was there could be consequences to a change in policy and if not carefully done could result in the southern states rebelling again within a generation.
Preventing the elderly and disabled? I do not understand that one. typo?
I not sure who provided prosthetic limbs in the union. In the former CSA, they were provided by state governments. Post civil war the biggest line item in the budget of the former CSA states was the purchase of prosthetic limbs.

" The federal government was not and is not a moral organization.The rights of former slaves and punishing plantation owners etc were not important enough for them to do much about it at the time. " That is literally what you said exactly. You said directly that ensuring rights for former slaves was not important. My point is by the same standard is preventing the disabled and elderly from starving to death "Important enough"? The other example was also a direct question to your "Important enough " bit. Yes I know the government did spend a very large amount of prosthetic limbs for ACW veterans. But by your logic why are they "Important enough". Or why should the the 19th Amendment have been passed and women been allowed to vote. Why were they important enough? Or a century after the Civil War why should the government have passed the 1964 Civil rights act and done things like try and integrate schools and try and allow black citizens to vote. Why were they important enough then?

You didn't position it as "Well this might be the morally right thing but it might very well cause another revolt. You just said the government isn't a moral organization and that Freedmen weren't important enough to bother to try and protect. Not that ultimately the politics of the era ultimately meant there wasn't enough political support for it among White Northern voters and unfortunately it didn't occur. You just said they didn't matter.

You also directly said the only difference between the American Revolution (Which might have had some not good causes such as anti Catholicism and expansion into Amerindian land but did have some more justified causes like the complete lack of any representation in Parliament and Parliament increasingly trying to rule the Colonies more and more directly) and the American Civil War (Which was launched entirely because one side didn't like the results of an election which they had a disproportionate representation for and also wanted to not only continue owning human beings forever but also expand chattel slavery as wide and as far as possible including before the war ironically enough trying to squash various "Free States" rights to not allow slavery within their borders. And for that they intentionally launched a war that ended up killing one in every eight American men and fired the first shots to boot) is that the US won the ARW and the CSA lost the ACW.

You keep talking about Real Politic.And yes often times in diplomacy and internal politics Real Politick forces countries to do nothing about bad things and not always do the right thing internally. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't at least try and do the right thing when they are able to.

I mean by pure real politick why even abolish slavery when the Union won the war? Why disrupt the social order even more. Why not just let the former Confederate states back into the Union with slavery intact forever.

 

[Father Maryland]

In my novel the entire Presidential succession in April 1865 was wiped out (along with Seward). The new government carried out sweeping measures of retaliation.

1) All senior secesh officials were imprisoned under emergency law, without trials, until they died.

2) All former less senior secesh officers and officials, and other potential leaders of insurrection, were sent to War Department Corrective Labor camps in Alaska.

3) The former secesh states (except for Tennessee, which had been readmitted) were kept under military rule, enforced by United States Colored Troops.

4) Any semblance of resistance, even supposedly innocuous things as prayer meetings, was broken up and the perpetrators hanged or shot after court-martial, or dispatched to the War Department corrective labor camps in Alaska.

5) Whites were forbidden from obtaining agricultural implements or even seed. Many died in famines.

6) All industrial establishments were destroyed, or shipped north. New ones were built by the Freedmens' Bureau for formerly enslaved persons only.

7) All plantations were confiscated, reserved for formerly enslaved persons to settle as small farmholdings.

8) Whites were forbidden education. (And education for the formerly enslaved persons of color was ineffective, but that was Gilded Age style corruption.)

9) The names of states and cities were obliterated. This went so far as rewriting Lincoln's statement after the fall of that secesh fortress the same day as Gettysburg: "The Missouri flows unvexed to the sea."

I realize that this may have been inadequate, but some said it had to be done.

These are all impressively terrible ideas. For a intentionally dystopic TL they're impressive.

Kind of remind me of a AH short story I read in a book a while back. Basically the situation was that Lincoln was still shot but survived in a coma meanwhile Seward and Johnson were both killed. Stanton more or less took over as dictator of the US "Until the President recovered" with the newly formed "Grand Army of the Republic" turned into a sort of secret police NKVD/KGB type affair. An incredibly harsh Reconstruction was forced with among other things had White Southerners who had tried to keep their slaves were internally deported to the Indian Territory (Though in some cases they were former slave owners who had just hired on their former staff as paid servants and others who were just unlucky) in an arrangement similar to say the deportation of Kulaks and other undesirables in the Soviet Union to Central Asia and Siberia during the 1930s (As the main character is being forced to board the train their's a incredibly malnourished white women in a very tattered dress who claims she walked back from the Indian territory and that they were more or less just dropping large numbers of people in the wildnerness with no food, no tools, no weapons, no supplies, and as a result the deportees were dying like flies.

 

[PrinceofApathy]

In OTL after the end of the ACW their was a reconstruction period where the Federal government at various times tried to reform Southern society, rebuild the south, and ensure rights for former slaves. Ultimately it more or less failed utterly and Southern society remained unreformed and civil rights were stripped from black citizens for nearly a century.

So the proposition is what is your ideal plan for Reconstruction and how it could be enacted? More then that it's a two part question

1) What is your ultimate ideal Reconstruction (With some caveats. IE things might be better then OTL but White Americans will not immediately universally view black Americans as being their fully equal in every way) and how could it be enacted? What would be required?

B) What is your ultimate realistic ideal Reconstruction plan. IE one that acknowledges that compromises will be made and things might not go well.

Hang every single Confederate statesman, officer, and civilian slaveholder, ideally by their former slaves. Disenfranchise and disarm Confederate soldiers and draft them into labor battalions to rebuild the south. The assets of those executed will be redistributed to former slaves to help them rebuild. The largest few plantations will be given to the federal government to make the occupation self-sustaining. Union soldiers who've completed their tour of duty will be invited to settle in vacant land with their families. Incentivize immigration to the South by closing down certain Northern centers of immigration. Confederate sympathies are severely punished, and paramilitaries are hunted down and neutralized before they can organize on a large scale. Invest in Southern railways and industry. If the South is re-admitted into the Union*, it would be as entirely different states and territories.

*If, not when. Only when the quality of life between southern blacks and whites is equal, and there is no desire to return to the old ways.

 

[marktaha]

Hang every single Confederate statesman, officer, and civilian slaveholder, ideally by their former slaves. Disenfranchise and disarm Confederate soldiers and draft them into labor battalions to rebuild the south. The assets of those executed will be redistributed to former slaves to help them rebuild. The largest few plantations will be given to the federal government to make the occupation self-sustaining. Union soldiers who've completed their tour of duty will be invited to settle in vacant land with their families. Incentivize immigration to the South by closing down certain Northern centers of immigration. Confederate sympathies are severely punished, and paramilitaries are hunted down and neutralized before they can organize on a large scale. Invest in Southern railways and industry. If the South is re-admitted into the Union*, it would be as entirely different states and territories.

*If, not when. Only when the quality of life between southern blacks and whites is equal, and there is no desire to return to the old ways.

Isn't defeating them in war and leaving their land a wreck enough? Any attempt at such a policy would have been opposed by men like Grant and Sherman - they weren't vindictive.

 

[marktaha]

These are all impressively terrible ideas. For a intentionally dystopic TL they're impressive.

Kind of remind me of a AH short story I read in a book a while back. Basically the situation was that Lincoln was still shot but survived in a coma meanwhile Seward and Johnson were both killed. Stanton more or less took over as dictator of the US "Until the President recovered" with the newly formed "Grand Army of the Republic" turned into a sort of secret police NKVD/KGB type affair. An incredibly harsh Reconstruction was forced with among other things had White Southerners who had tried to keep their slaves were internally deported to the Indian Territory (Though in some cases they were former slave owners who had just hired on their former staff as paid servants and others who were just unlucky) in an arrangement similar to say the deportation of Kulaks and other undesirables in the Soviet Union to Central Asia and Siberia during the 1930s (As the main character is being forced to board the train their's a incredibly malnourished white women in a very tattered dress who claims she walked back from the Indian territory and that they were more or less just dropping large numbers of people in the wildnerness with no food, no tools, no weapons, no supplies, and as a result the deportees were dying like flies.

Do you mean The Lincoln Train?

 

[Father Maryland]

Do you mean The Lincoln Train?

I think that might have been it but I was pretty young when I read it.

 

[PrinceofApathy]

Isn't defeating them in war and leaving their land a wreck enough? Any attempt at such a policy would have been opposed by men like Grant and Sherman - they weren't vindictive.

This is about what we would do, not them. It clearly wasn't enough based on Reconstruction IOTL.