I've always wondered wether there is any chance that Reconstruction would have created civil rights for African-Americans immediately and permanently. What do you think?
My main idea is that Reconstruction is implemented more efficiently,with more help for black people and less retribution towards white Southerners. Because of this,Rutherford B. Hayes is elected by a wider margin,and does not have to make the deal to withdraw troops from the South. How plausible is this?
Why is it that people always bring up how there was "retribution" and such horrible treatment for white southerners when we see scarcely a shred of evidence for it? Brownlow of Tennessee (one of the few examples I can think of of anything resembling retribution against ex-Confederates) may have been a jerk, but that wasn't "radical Republicans up North/in Congress".
We see Confederate generals in Congress post-war, and several others holding state offices (some doing both), we see the KKK and its fellows terrorizing blacks who dared to vote, we see this http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Civil_War_AdmissionReadmission.htm - with the latest state being in 1870 - and all signs pointing to a rush to reembrace the South.
By the point Hayes was elected, Reconstruction has been defeated about as decisively as anything short of overturning the latest three amendments could make it. Keeping a tiny handful of troops in South Carolina or Louisiana would not have done much of anything.
So unless there is an actual attempt to force more than lip service to those amendments, which would mean Reconstruction actually applying force to "reconstruct", no, there is no chance.
My main idea is that Reconstruction is implemented more efficiently,with more help for black people and less retribution towards white Southerners. Because of this,Rutherford B. Hayes is elected by a wider margin,and does not have to make the deal to withdraw troops from the South. How plausible is this?