Is a successful Reconstruction ASB?
- Thread starter sirjackalot
- Start date
Sp what? What are they going to do about it? In the words of Joseph E Johnston "My view, sir is that our people tired of war, feel themselves whipped and will not fight. Daily my men are deserting in large numbers, since Lee's defeat they consider the war as at an end." Southerners were sick of war by this time and the South was helpless. Also a lot of Poor Whites were Union Veterans and would gain from it.
How do you determine that outside of them volunteering into the Union Army? Anyone can say they were Pro-Union and many would lie just to gain the land. You would see a lot of Pro-Confederate Southerners willing to lie to get land.
SuperSage125
Banned
If it is possible; one could look at their pre- war viewpoints like in places like the newspaper(i.e pro-union newspapers). Or have the government look at how they voted in the presidential elections before the war. Also they could look at how many Unionist Southerners were in the US army during the Civil war.
You wouldn't have many of the former and I doubt that the government had records of the latter. They would know how many votes there were for Brekenridge but not who voted for him. And what about all the Southern states that didn't even allow Lincoln to be on the ballot? There were probably thousands of Southerners (mostly in the hills) who would have voted for Lincoln if he was on the ballot but voted for someone else because he wasn't.
Deleted member 92195
This just shows how Lincoln was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
You have the beaten confederacy which has a slave society and then you have radical reconstruction who want to obliterate that society. You then have Lincoln in the middle.
This could be linked into whether Lincoln should run for a third term, in that based on what you have said is the remainder of his second term enough to accomplish reconstruction and is there anyone else who could reasonably implement his policies if not.
There are two problems:
- How much of an impasse will former confederates and radical reconstructionists be to Lincoln accomplishing his goals in the remainder of his second term?
- Sadly there is not a Lincoln replacement and if there were Republicans would not pick that individual as the 1868 Republican nominee because that individual did not defeat the confederacy. Therefore radical reconstructionists will pick a radical reconstructionist nominee. Thus as a consequence of electing a radical reconstructionist to destroy that slave society, they cause open rebellion and fail to reform said slave society because of their irrespective understanding that reform required the south to be onside.
However, if the size of accomplishing reconstruction is so big that it cannot be accomplished with just the remainder of his second term but it is also evident (to some republicans) that Lincoln is the only one who can make it successful and it would require a third term then you could find a situation where half of the Republican party attempts to persuade Lincoln to run in 1868 and the other half are against him running.
Therefore the degree and complexity of impasse and the size and dynamism of the reconstruction programme become the foundation cause for republicans to realise that while radical reconstructionism is the ideal method to eradicate slavery, we don't live in an ideal world. Therefore Lincoln has a chance to take part in his third Republican convention in 1868.
Likewise, it is known that Lincoln wanted to retire because of being aged by the civil war but it is up to Republicans to persuade himself that he is the only individual who can develop the Founding Father's project in the correct direction.
There are certain presidents who do deserve a third term and Lincoln is one of them if he cannot accomplish reconstruction in his second term.
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Not really. There wasn't the will or desire to engage in radical land distribution. By 1872 you already had Liberal Republicans wanting to end Reconstruction with the, quite frankly, very tame policies already undertaken. The Radicals were not even a majority in the GOP, and there's a huge difference between smashing an outlaw band like the KKK to enforce existing amendments and giving the government the right to engage in mass confiscation and redistribution of land and engage in the carving up of territorial areas of the Union. Add in the need to pay off war debts and the desire to shrink the military apparatus and how would this even be enforced or paid for?
And land redistribution would hit many of the wrong people.
Most of the bigger planters were former Whigs, who had voted CU in the election and opposed immediate secession, though generally acquiescing in it once it was a fait accompli. If there were to be a pro-Union party in the South, these would be the natural leaders of it. It would make no sense for Lincoln to go around dispossessing former colleagues whom he probably hoped would eventually be colleagues again.
Not that there's any evidence that he contemplated dispossessing anyone. Note that it was Johnson, not Lincoln, who required property owners over $20,000 to apply for individual pardons. Lincoln's amnesty schemes had not contained such a "property" clause.
If a double vacancy arises, the new POTUS is Lafayette Foster of CT, the President of the Senate. He was *not* a Radical.
After him, a new POTUS will be elected in Nov 1865. This will of course be Grant. Any reason to suppose that his coming in three years earlier will make any enormous difference to subsequent history?
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https://pando.com/2015/04/10/war-nerd-the-confederates-who-shouldve-been-hanged/
The War Nerd thinks Wade Hampton and Forrest should have been hanged, and Reconstruction would have had a better shot without these two capable, strong leaders leading the fight against it. There was a case for having Forrest tried and executed for the Fort Pillow massacre. Wade Hampton, I don't know if there was a case for anything he did in the Civil War, and he didn't raise his Red Shirts until it was safe after Reconstruction ended. Maybe the way to make Reconstruction work would be if Grant said Reconstruction was over in 1867 while the North was still ready to fight, then, when unreconstructed confederates stuck their necks out, whack a mole.
The War Nerd thinks Wade Hampton and Forrest should have been hanged, and Reconstruction would have had a better shot without these two capable, strong leaders leading the fight against it. There was a case for having Forrest tried and executed for the Fort Pillow massacre. Wade Hampton, I don't know if there was a case for anything he did in the Civil War, and he didn't raise his Red Shirts until it was safe after Reconstruction ended. Maybe the way to make Reconstruction work would be if Grant said Reconstruction was over in 1867 while the North was still ready to fight, then, when unreconstructed confederates stuck their necks out, whack a mole.
Not much different from what happened OTL in 1871/2, after the Ku Klux Acts were passed.
The Redeemers just kept their heads down until northern attention had moved on to other matters, then came out of the woodwork again.
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Radicals won't count for as much as OTL.
Much of their importance stemmed from the fact that their votes were needed to override Andrew Johnson's vetoes. Lincoln, if still alive, will presumably have signed the Civil Rights and Freedman's Bureau bills, so won't be on such bad terms with Congress. Most measures will require only a simple majority, which is probably attainable even if some Radicals "sulk in their tents" and vote nay.
Big question is whether Congress still passes the 14th Amendment, and if so in what form. Lincoln will certainly object to Section 3, which is a blatant infringement of his pardoning power, and he'll have enough clout in Congress to block any Amendment containing such a clause. OTOH he will certainly support Section 4, and shouldn't have any principled objection to Sections 1 and 2, though if he views Sec 2 as a Radical ruse to provoke the South into ejecting the Amendment, he may just *conceivably* oppose that too.
Ex-Confederates could be a bigger problem - certainly if they are as obstreperous as OTL. I suspect he'll do as much as he can before they have a chance to get their breath back. He may just order Army Commanders in the South to enroll as voters all males who appear to be over 21 and can read, write and explain a paragraph from the Constitution of the United States (a common test in those days, iirc), and will indicate that he requires the same principle to be included in any new State Constitutions. He might also instruct the Army to seize any ballot forms bearing the names of unpardoned rebel leaders. Beyond that it's hard to say. He might anticipate the Black Codes and take steps to forestall them, or then again he might not.
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A lot of the talk in this thread is about land distribution but I've personally wondered if African Americans could have kept voting rights in one or two of the states were they constituted majorities or near majorities. From my perspective, that would have massively improved the situation in the long run.
Thomas1195
Banned
That's why we have the State Suicide theory. Carve up the Southern states to create black majority ones.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
National consensus on persistent acceptance of the postwar civil rights acts and political enfranchisement and a forgetting rather than romanticizing of the lost cause might be possible if we think outside the box. Way outside the box.
A war before the 1890s with another power. And a splendid little war won't do. Even a WWII may not do. But a war against a dangerous foreign invader that affects ex-Confederate states that Yanks and white and black southerners all have to unite to fight. Preferably racially different from black or white, but that's not absolutely vital. Now your challenge is to find a corner of the world where you can construct that enemy, a pathway for it to get here, a motive and capability for it come in spite of expected obstacles of Pax Brittanica, and then slap a butterfly net over it so that everything in North America is just about the same through the ACW and reconstruction. Good luck.
A war before the 1890s with another power. And a splendid little war won't do. Even a WWII may not do. But a war against a dangerous foreign invader that affects ex-Confederate states that Yanks and white and black southerners all have to unite to fight. Preferably racially different from black or white, but that's not absolutely vital. Now your challenge is to find a corner of the world where you can construct that enemy, a pathway for it to get here, a motive and capability for it come in spite of expected obstacles of Pax Brittanica, and then slap a butterfly net over it so that everything in North America is just about the same through the ACW and reconstruction. Good luck.
South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana all had black majorities in 1870. Georgia, Florida, and Alabama were all over 45% black that same year.
EDIT: Oops, I misunderstood that comment as saying "what if there were some black-majority states".
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Instead of creating new states and all that, can't we create a scenario where most Southern governorships are under Republican control, probably by preventing voter suppression?
Some Democratic victories were pretty narrow. Could their results be reversed?
Some Democratic victories were pretty narrow. Could their results be reversed?
How do you prevent voter suppression?
By 1876 the US Army numbered less than 30,000 men, of whom maybe 3,000 could be spared for duty in the South. That is far too few to police a region stretching from Virginia to Texas.
According to Fletcher Pratt, we won 'The Civil War on Western Waters' by using tinclads, or unarmored steamboats, in the small shallow rivers, and ironclads backing them up. Since bulk transport went by river it worked without a huge army in pillboxes. Give black freemen the tinclads and ironclads, they'd police the region.