During a longer or more radical reconstruction would there have been a full De-Confederization?

How? Treating them badly would just make them more, not less, likely to romanticise their cause. Just as if Jefferson Davis had been hanged in 1865, the carving of him on Stone Mountain might today be even bigger than that of Lee, rather than smaller as OTL.

I disagree on the martyr argument. Most of the romanticization happened decades after the war into the early 20th century and beyond, mainly to validate the current segregation practices.

The government wouldn't have had to punish all southerners just those that tried to cling to the confederacy and its figureheads. Eventually most of the population would have realized it would be easier to just forget about them than have to deal with the repercussions to revere them.
 
Honestly, what you need is for the Federal government to stay committed to enforcing fair elections and battling white supremacist terrorism. After a few generations of black self-governance, the culture will have to change to reflect the new political reality.
 

Marc

Donor
The biggest hurdle, and one that may be just about impossible, is for the South to admit guilt, to deal with Vergangenheitsbewältigung, - overcoming the past- as the Germans termed it.
It would have been possible through the strong sense of faith that existed then predominately then, and now, if the church in the American South hadn't been, and is, overwhelmingly collaborationist.
 
Last edited:
I disagree on the martyr argument. Most of the romanticization happened decades after the war into the early 20th century and beyond, mainly to validate the current segregation practices.

Not so. In A Fool's Errand, (Ch XXV) Albion W Tourgee grumbles that if the romanticising of the Southern cause, even in the North, continues at its current rate, veterans will soon be ashamed to say that they fought for the Union. He was writing in 1879.

The government wouldn't have had to punish all southerners just those that tried to cling to the confederacy and its figureheads. Eventually most of the population would have realized it would be easier to just forget about them than have to deal with the repercussions to revere them.

The way the Irish settled down happily under British rule once we'd hanged a few of their rebel leaders?
 
Last edited:
Perhaps there would be less of a Solid South voting bloc for a century? If they can no longer massacres Republicans down there (forget if they got away with it. They did put up a monument to it, though.), if the Democratic Psrty down there doesn't become a political machine, etc then elections may swing different ways, even if just barely. Nothing against Democrats of course, and the people I am talking about are the sort who went Dixiecrat.
 
Top