A Supreme Court That Upholds Reconstruction Legislation/Amendments

. . . All the problems with the "40 acres and a mule" notion have been pointed out by David T and others besides myself.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/carr/seaoutline.htm

' . . . General William T. Sherman created his own land redistribution policy. Sherman meet with Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, and a delegation of twenty black leaders on January 12, 1865 to address the problems of the Freedmen. After hearing that what the Freedmen desired most was their own land, he issued Special Field Order #15. This order declared that the Sea Islands on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia would be reserved for Freedman. Under this order each family would be eligible for 40 acres of land for their own cultivation. The area included the islands of Hilton Head, Port Royal, St. Helena and many other smaller islands that had been under Union control since 1861. Sherman would go on to allow Freedmen use of army mules that were were no longer fit for army service. These acts would serve as the basis for the cry of "forty acres and a mule," the basis for many Freedmen's hopes and demands later in reconstruction. . . '
The problem was that Andrew Johnson started to reverse this in January 1866.
 
The problem was that Andrew Johnson started to reverse this in January 1866.


Of course.

Sherman had to get rid of the thousands of slaves who had followed his army as it marched to the sea, and this arrangement was the quickest way of doing so. He was undoubtedly aware that he had no authority to give them any title to the land in question, but it got them out of his hair, which was all that mattered.

Sherman was like that. When he needed to do something right away, he did it first and let the longer run take care of itself. In like fashion, he signed peace terms with JE Johnston in full knowledge that he was grossly exceeding his authority. But he also knew for virtual certain that once Johnston's army was surrendered it was likely to stay surrendered, and would almost certainly never resume hostilities. So he signed the "treaty" and left Washington to do what it would.

In any case the order applied only to a small area which had been in Union hands for several years, so that its current population was overwhelmingly Black. Any attempt to do the same thing anywhere with a significant white population would just have led to the deaths of any Freedmen rash enough to take it seriously, even had the Federal government ever contemplated doing it, which was never even remotely likely.

With the war coming rapidly to an end, Priority #1 was to get the South back onto a peace footing, and reconcile it to the restored Union asap. This clearly implied that all Rebs, save perhaps a few top-rankers, would need to be pardoned, whereupon, of course they would reclaim their property. Had someone other than Johnson been POTUS, this might have taken a few months longer to happen, but happen it would.

Incidentally, without Andrew Johnson would the Freedmen even have got the vote, let alone land? Congress was wary of the suffrage issue, not mentioning it in the 14th Amendment, and postponing the 15th until the 1868 election was safely out of the way. They adopted Freedmen Suffrage in 1867 not from choice but because it was the only way of breaking the impasse which had developed between themselves and the POTUS. Had Johnson been more co-operative, and twisted the South's arm until it ratified the 14A, they would in all probability have dropped the matter with a sigh of relief. If they are that hesitant even over granting the vote, there isn't the remotest chance of their embracing something even more controversial.
 
. . . Any attempt to do the same thing anywhere with a significant white population would just have led to the deaths of any Freedmen rash enough to take it seriously, . . .
Did Japanese citizens commit significant acts of terrorism during American occupation?

And we looked down on the Japanese for racial reasons. And the Japanese believed they were superior, certainly to the Koreans and maybe to us as well. In fact, belief in racism, very ironically, seems to be a shared human trait.

And plus, when people lose a war, they tend to feel chastened and blame themselves.
 
Did Japanese citizens commit significant acts of terrorism during American occupation?

Nor did Southerners commit any against Union occupation forces. They did of course commit them against "uppity" Blacks, but there was no Japanese equivalent of this group, so there the question didn't arise.

And we looked down on the Japanese for racial reasons. And the Japanese believed they were superior, certainly to the Koreans and maybe to us as well. In fact, belief in racism, very ironically, seems to be a shared human trait.

Indeed so. Even were the whole human race to die out except for the English, I suspect it wouldn't be long before different groups of Englishmen started to have similar prejudices against each other.

And plus, when people lose a war, they tend to feel chastened and blame themselves.

The Germans didn't after 1918. They just looked for scapegoats.

They did post-1945, but the circumstances then were unique. It was a straight choice between Uncle Sam and Uncle Joe, so they had to "play along" with the Wallies and at least make a pretence of having been lifelong democrats and anti-Nazis. By contrast, the defeated South had no "worse" to make them cling to a Union "nurse". Their situation was far more akin to 1918 than to 1945.

Nor, by and large, did the Frogs after 1815. To this day many of them admire Napoleon, despite his having led them to a catastrophic defeat.

FTM, the Japanese themselves don't seem particularly apologetic about their behaviour in WW2. At times, they even try to claim the moral high ground on account of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cheeky sods.


BTW, many thanks for posting that link in your earlier message. I'll be making a few comments on it when I get the chance.
 
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DougM

Donor
The only way that the freed slaves and thier descendents are going to do noticeablybetter is if they are given territory out west that is basically thier own. And no way in gods green earth is the average white American in 1860-70 time frame going to look fondly upon what is basically one ore more states made up of African Americans. If the US had a way to relocate them someplace other then North America fine, but creating basically a separate self governing area for The directly connected to the rest of the US? Sorry not happen. And anything short of a self governing area is going to result in discrimination.
You could put them into the north where the people were less racist (still a lot of racism but not as bad) but doing that will feel like the north is being punished by having large areas of it given away (this doesn’t mater if it goes to whites or blacks ) as anyone new to an area is viewed as competitors and thus bad for you and your family and friends.
Discrimination was pretty much a consistent thing throughout the whole world in the late 1800s and is still pretty common today. It is not so much a racist thing as it is a “survival thing”
In order for you, your family, you dependents and your friends to survive reproduce expand and thrive you are competing against anyone that is not part of your group. And it is pretty obvious if your group is Blue that those Green folks are not part of your group. Therefore in order to help your group you are better off to work with your Blue folks and not help those Green folks. Those Green folks are competing against you. They are using land and resources that could have helped your group so they are obviously bad from your groups point of view.
Thus you get racism. Even if we all looked alike we would see discrimination. And in fact we do. Try a teenage boy pulling up in a ratty old rusted car into a rich neighborhood and see how well that goes over. The police and security will be looking for a reason to harass him. The businesses will ignore him in favor of local wealthy types and the girls he is flirting with will mostly ignore him. Except for a few that probably are flirting back to spite someone, and those girls parents will have a fit. This is discrimination and is based on the fact that the poor kid is an outsider as everyone in thier group is wealthy.
So discrimination is human nature. Is it right. No but is is a given. The thing is we have been trying to get past this for decades and are only having a partial success. So in a time that people were much more concerned about survival and protecting thier own is just not going to happen. And frankly if something happened and it becomes more of a fight for survival the discrimination WILL come back big time. If it becomes a matter of your child’s live vs the neighbors the vast majority of humans will protect thier own.
So thier is no simple solution to this problem and the way modern society tries to pretend thier is is completely ignorant of reality. Discrimination and racism is based on a valid (not nice but valid) survival tactic. And unless you can get ride of the survival of the fittest aspect of early human development you can not get rid of it completely. All you can do is advance to a point that your families survival is assured so that you do not get an us vs them thing going, this allows you to slowly shed discrimination. But as some as things go bad it will return in some form. Be it race based or location based or cultural based or religious based or what have you.

We in the developed world living in the 21st century can aford to shed our discriminations of all sorts because we have plenty to go around. This was not the case in 1870s America. Or 1870s anywhere really. And it SURE was not the case in the 1700s.
 
The Germans didn't after 1918. They just looked for scapegoats.
In fact, I’ve read that German myths post-1918 became worse and worse, as various elites were blamed for somehow doing the country down.

And, point well taken.

You provide several good illustrations that there’s more to the situation than simply how skillfully the military occupation is carried out.

And you’re welcome for the link.
 
Not necessarily.


https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1027&context=gcjcwe

The Union army should have prevented this kind of shit. Confederate military units re-forming in kind of capacity should have been miles away from what was viewed as an acceptable norm.

And freed men and women owning firearms was a positive, not a negative.


It is indeed a very interesting link. However - -

I'm not too sure how the Union Army is supposed to prevent "this kind of ****". By the close of Reconstruction it was, iirc, only about 27,000 strong, with the great majority of these stationed out west, and only a handful left in the South. As this article itself states

Federal prosecutions against Klansmen succeeded in some states, but the vast stretch of southern territory and webs of local authorities made it nearly impossible to impose federal law in the former Confederacy.

This is where a lot of threads like these get it wrong. Overwhelmingly, they look to *Federal* action, whether by congress or the SCOTUS, and the sad truth is that once the United States was back on a peace footing, and the Army shrunk back to peacetime size, there was precious little that Washington *could* do. [1] This fight would have to be won or lost (imho almost certainly lost) at State level. And the State governments - even Republican ones - seem to have been very hesitant about employing Black militias - though Adelbert Ames did in MS as late as 1875-6, so there were clearly quite a few Freedmen who had not been disarmed. But to no avail.


There were black militias formed throughout the South, armed by Federal and local governments, and there were some incidents,38 but they were rarely if ever used by states with Republican-controlled Governors. In fact, the opposite was generally the case.39

The material about disarming of Blacks is certainly interesting, but are you sure you aren't confusing cause and effect? IOW, did Reconstruction fail because the Freedmen were disarmed, or were they being disarmed because Reconstruction was ineffective? I'd have thought it was more the latter. After all, if a state government cannot prevent its own supporters from being forcibly disarmed by its opponents, can it really be said to be in control?

I wonder how much authority these Reconstruction governments really had beyond the immediate vicinity of their State Capitals - even *before* the Union soldiers left. MacPherson [2] makes an interesting point. During the crisis of 1876/7, the Republican governments of SC and LA were still installed under the protection of the Army - yet the white populations were simply ignoring them and paying their taxes to their Democratic rivals. They still occupied the Statehouses and Governor's Mansions, but outside the Capitals their writ simply did not run. I suspect the same situation, in less extreme form, held in quite a lot of places during Reconstruction, which much of the South being "redeemed" on the ground well before the State was redeemed formally.


[1] Before anyone suggests increasing the size of the Army, could they please note that with a humungous bill to pay for the recent war, any such proposal would have been a complete non-starter.

[2] Ordeal By Fire, Ch 32.​
 
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. . . In order for you, your family, you dependents and your friends to survive reproduce expand and thrive you are competing against anyone that is not part of your group. And it is pretty obvious if your group is Blue that those Green folks . . .
But evolution only loosens connects to human behavior.

A great example would be music. Most of us like music at least a little. Some of us like it a whole lot. And there was no evolutionary purpose in slowly building up a love of music. Rather, whatever built up brains to a certain size and complexity, some of that gets re-purposed for music.

Or, if we want something really logical, maybe Jeremy Bentham's Principle of Utility in which your future happiness counts just as much as mine, or Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, and the two have a lot of overlap of course, but college ethics class focused on the disagreements. Even so, I have fond memories of that class. But all the same, humans generally do not make decisions based on this kind of logic. Rather we have certain deeply-held ideas about fairness, and a bigger or smaller repertoire of what to do when actions cut across these standards, and a bigger or smaller local community to lean on for help and support.

And it seems to me that a good leader could roll forward with the best of this, including the idea that newly freed slaves deserve a fair chance.
 
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

https://books.google.com/books?id=I...r Confederate states, save Tennessee"&f=false

' . . . By March of 1867, it was clear that the amendment [14th Amendment] would not obtain the three-fourths of the states necessary.

'The Republicans who controlled Congress, including Conkling, responded by passing the Reconstruction Acts, which effectively disbanded the governments of all the former Confederate states, save Tennessee. The Reconstruction Acts created new, multiracial Reconstruction governments for these recalcitrant states and required the exclusion from office of anyone who served in the Confederacy. Congress also warned the southern states that they would not be fully admitted back into the Union until they ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. . . '
Approximately two years after the end of the war . . .

And actually, pretty hardcore action on the part of the Republican Congress.

These new, multiracial governments may have done pretty alright for about the ten years they had. Until federal troops were withdrawn in the so-called "Compromise" of 1877.
 
These new, multiracial governments may have done pretty alright for about the ten years they had. Until federal troops were withdrawn in the so-called "Compromise" of 1877.

Which ones had ten years?

Iirc VA was redeemed almost immediately, already having a conservative legislature when readmitted in 1870.

TN, NC and GA were redeemed by 1871.

TX was redeemed in 1873, AL and AR in 1874, MS in 1876.

The Dems took FL in the 1876 State election.

That just leaves SC and LA, where Republican governments maintained a nominal existence into 1877 - so they lasted about nine years. OTOH, if I can believe McPherson, their white populations had been ignoring them and paying taxes to the rival Democratic governments since Nov 1876 ie well before the Federal troops left, and he makes no mention of the Army being able to do anything about this.
 
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So long as providing that fair chance doesn't require any serious effort or inconvenience for themselves.
Except . . . at the beginning when I really think southern whites expected to be lorded over.

An analogy might be a school teacher who starts off very firm and business-like at the beginning of the school year and ever so gradually loosens up, as an example of an authoritarian system which sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't. And an example of an authoritarian system I suspect most of us are pretty familiar with.
 
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TX was redeemed in 1873, AL and AR in 1874, MS in 1876.

The Dems took FL in the 1876 State election.

That just leaves SC and LA, where Republican governments maintained a nominal existence into 1877 - so they lasted about nine years. OTOH, if I can believe McPherson, their white populations had been ignoring them and paying taxes to the rival Democratic governments since Nov 1876 ie well before the Federal troops left, and he makes no mention of the Army being able to do anything about this.
This is the kind of real-world history for grown-ups we should teach in school.

If you can recommend a somewhat brief, but still solid middle-of-the-road source, I'd appreciate it.
 
This is the kind of real-world history for grown-ups we should teach in school.

If you can recommend a somewhat brief, but still solid middle-of-the-road source, I'd appreciate it.


Part 3 of James M McPherson's Ordeal by Fire is probably as good as anything.

In the Knopf edition it is about 100 pages.
 
This is the kind of real-world history for grown-ups we should teach in school.

If you can recommend a somewhat brief, but still solid middle-of-the-road source, I'd appreciate it.


Further to my last message, if you take me up on it I strongly suggest getting a used copy.

Some new ones are outrageously priced, but a quick glance at Amazon and Abebooks shows used copies available for a tenth (I kid you not) of what it would cost new.
 
SECTION 2:
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed, but when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

I do wonder how it would have gone if this provision of the Constitution was actually enforced and the Southern delegates to Congress were reduced by in some cases half of their numbers because they refused to honor the later Fifteenth Amendment and denied black males the right to vote.
 
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