How radical can reconstruction get?

You would agree that even one state staying reconstructed would count as an improvement?

It would if it were feasible - but how?

If its neighbours are "redeemed" then the KKK et al have safe havens into which they can retreat whenever they need to, only to come back at their leisure. Given steadily growing Northern indifference there could only be one outcome.
 
It wasn't really abrupt; by 1876 white Democrats had already gained control in eight of the eleven Confederate States. Black voting was already being suppressed via violence and poll taxes, and Federal troops were stationed in only three Southern states (not coincidentally, the only Southern states Hayes won in 1876). . . .
I'd still rather have the fade than the big announced withdraw.
 
How? By having a fairy godmother wave a magic wand?
Just the energy of Sherman in the early days! That's the basic economic re-building that I want.

And we skillfully cover both black and white farmers. For example, for weather disasters, you get 100% reimbursement for the first 50 acres and 50% for the next 50. Yes, rich farmers with a lot of acreage can still get this money, but you see how the program is geared to the smaller farmer.
 
Just the energy of Sherman in the early days! That's the basic economic re-building that I want.

And we skillfully cover both black and white farmers. For example, for weather disasters, you get 100% reimbursement for the first 50 acres and 50% for the next 50. Yes, rich farmers with a lot of acreage can still get this money, but you see how the program is geared to the smaller farmer.

Who is "we"?

When did Sherman play (or desire to play) any postwar role in the South? To the best of my knowledge he wasn't one of the military governors. So where does his energy come into it?

Can you point me to any move by either Congress or any State government (of whatever political character) to do anything of the kind that you suggest?
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
It would if it were feasible - but how?

If its neighbours are "redeemed" then the KKK et al have safe havens into which they can retreat whenever they need to, only to come back at their leisure. Given steadily growing Northern indifference there could only be one outcome.

Let's be honest, once the Feds put in a concerted effort to defeat the KKK they went down fairly quickly, and wouldn't resurface until the 1910s and 1920s. The KKK weren't the problem you're making them out to be.

Honestly, I think the best way to make Reconstruction succeed is to make redistribution of land less about the Freedmen and more about a generalized redistribution to both Freedmen and poor southern whites. You could also give Freedmen/poor Southern whites the option of cheap/free land in the West. This would win over what would become the foot soldiers of the Southern Elite to de-reconstruct the South. This would make Republicans out of many poor Southern whites.

Now, would this solution work perfectly? No. No solution would ever work perfectly, but it would create a perception among the Southern poor and unite the poor Southern Whites with the cause of the Freedmen.

Use Class Warfare, not race warfare. The poor, black and white, outnumber the Elite immensely.
 
Let's be honest, once the Feds put in a concerted effort to defeat the KKK they went down fairly quickly, and wouldn't resurface until the 1910s and 1920s. The KKK weren't the problem you're making them out to be.

That's why I said "et al". The KKK may have closed down (under that name) but other such organisations not only continued but won.

Honestly, I think the best way to make Reconstruction succeed is to make redistribution of land less about the Freedmen and more about a generalized redistribution to both Freedmen and poor southern whites. You could also give Freedmen/poor Southern whites the option of cheap/free land in the West. This would win over what would become the foot soldiers of the Southern Elite to de-reconstruct the South. This would make Republicans out of many poor Southern whites.

Now, would this solution work perfectly? No. No solution would ever work perfectly, but it would create a perception among the Southern poor and unite the poor Southern Whites with the cause of the Freedmen.

If the planter elite were destroyed, whom would they be united against? They would have no common enemy

Use Class Warfare, not race warfare. The poor, black and white, outnumber the Elite immensely.

Why should anyone in the North have wanted to get rid of the elite? It had reconciled itself to the outcome of the war, so might just as well be left in charge. How is the North any better off by having a South run by Confederate NCOs instead of Confederate officers?

And why would wealthy Republicans want to promote class warfare? They would have no guarantee of it remaining confined to the South.
 
It would if it were feasible - but how?

If its neighbours are "redeemed" then the KKK et al have safe havens into which they can retreat whenever they need to, only to come back at their leisure. Given steadily growing Northern indifference there could only be one outcome.
The GOP was the majority in the late 19th century. Getting 4 extra senators and a few more reps from keeping South Carolina and/or Missisipi reconstructed would have been something they'd want to keep in place if it showed signs of being sustainable.

Ok, so you originally start off with say 3 states staying reconstructed and the groups you mention whittle it down to first two, and by say 1910 one. By 1910 the GOP would have gotten too used to the one to be willing to look aside. That and the locals in SC/MS would have had more time to lawyer up, get armed while the remaining whites who want 'redemption' can move and go be a bigot elsewhere. Easy to see the logic working.
 
The GOP was the majority in the late 19th century. Getting 4 extra senators and a few more reps from keeping South Carolina and/or Missisipi reconstructed would have been something they'd want to keep in place if it showed signs of being sustainable.

Of course they'd like to control a Southern State or two - providing it didn't cost them anything in the North. Note that by 1876 irritation at the "autumnal outbreaks in the South" was threatening the possible loss of Ohio and Wisconsin, w/o which the disputed Southern states could not have saved them. And of course, the Democrats only need to win one Presidential race and it's game over - the last troops leave and the remaining states are redeemed.

It was simply better political economy to write off the South and concentrate on squeezing out winning margins in NY and Indiana - a far more feasible objective.

This is why I feel that the best bet for continued Republican support of the Black vote might have been the abolition of the Electoral College. In a direct popular election, the votes of Southern Blacks would still count nationally even if they didn't win in any Southern state, so the Republicans would have far more incentive to keep up the fight. At any rate, they might manage to keep the Black vote at about 1880s levels, and prevent the near-total disfranchisement of the early 20C.

Ok, so you originally start off with say 3 states staying reconstructed and the groups you mention whittle it down to first two, and by say 1910 one. By 1910 the GOP would have gotten too used to the one to be willing to look aside. That and the locals in SC/MS would have had more time to lawyer up, get armed while the remaining whites who want 'redemption' can move and go be a bigot elsewhere. Easy to see the logic working.
long

Why on earth would it take until 1910? No Republican State government in the South ever came anywhere near lasting that long.
 
https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/carr/seaoutline.htm

' . . . 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. . . '
I wish we would have rolled with this early momentum. :)
 
https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/carr/seaoutline.htm

' . . . Sherman would later claim that his order was a temporary measure and was not meant to give the Freedmen permanent possession of the land. . . '
Maybe Sherman made this switch when he picked up which way the political winds were blowing ?

In any case, this early practice of 40 acres ended up being only a hint of how things might have turned out very differently.
 
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https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/carr/seaoutline.htm (same paragraph)

"What prompted Sherman's order? Was he a humanitarian? Or a staunch supporter of the Freedmen? It seems likely that Sherman's intention was simply to relieve his army of the thousands of Freedmen and women who had been following it since Sherman's invasion of Georgia. As Sherman's army marched by, freedman had abandoned the plantations and begun to follow the army. Feeding and clothing thousands of people became a strain."

Sherman was not a political animal and he lived in the present. The 40 acres arrangement was the quickest way of getting all those black camp followers off his hands, so he did it. Iirc he'd also received fresh mules for his army, and so left the old ones behind at the same time.

Note that only a couple of months later he signs a peace agreement with Joseph E Johnston which doesn't even mention emancipation, and includes terms which went way beyond his authority. This was Sherman's way. If he had a problem to solve, he did so in the quickest way possible, and left others to worry about the fiddling details. He wanted the rebel armies to pack up and go home, and this deal seemed to him the quickest way of accomplishing it, so he went ahead w/o troubling over nitpicking questions like whether he had the authority or not.

There's not the slightest evidence that he gave a toss about what happened once the war was over. He just wanted to end it and was willing to do anything which facilitated this. Whether the blacks would be able to keep the land after the war (or whether the Confederate State governments would be allowed to stay in office after it) was simply not his problem.


More generally, see the C Vann Woodward essay, quoted by David T at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...econstruction-get.424723/page-4#post-15535367 as to the impracticality of the whole business. Transforming penniless sharecroppers into penniless subsistence farmers is hardly a big deal.
 
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. . . Sherman was not a political animal and he lived in the present. The 40 acres arrangement was the quickest way of getting all those black camp followers off his hands, so he did it. Iirc he'd also received fresh mules for his army, and so left the old ones behind at the same time.

Note that only a couple of months later he signs a peace agreement with Joseph E Johnston which doesn't even mention emancipation, and includes terms which went way beyond his authority. This was Sherman's way. If he had a problem to solve, he did so in the quickest way possible, and left others to worry about the fiddling details. . .
I welcome a practical individual making decisions for straightforward reasons.
 
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