Radical Reconstruction

ok this has likely come up before but what would be the affect of a Radical Reconstruction of the American South, with say the Ironclad oath over the whole south? any thoughts?
 
Blacks and poor Whites are significantly better off. IIRC, some of the Radical Republicans were planning on land reform, breaking up the landed estates and distributing them to blacks and poor whites across the South. If that happens, the GOP is going to be competitive, if not dominant in the South, which may end up killing the Democratic Party itself.
 
Blacks and poor Whites are significantly better off. IIRC, some of the Radical Republicans were planning on land reform, breaking up the landed estates and distributing them to blacks and poor whites across the South. If that happens, the GOP is going to be competitive, if not dominant in the South, which may end up killing the Democratic Party itself.

oh that sounds GREAT :) (not the death of the Democratic Party but the rest sounds great) any way on the Democratic Party front, the Democrats are strong in New York at the time, would the lose of the south really kill them, couldn't they regrow out of Penn and NY?
 

Jasen777

Donor
The Democrats are still a major player in the north - they'd probably be even more successful if the radicals push through a harsher reconstruction.
 

Eurofed

Banned
The Democrats are still a major player in the north - they'd probably be even more successful if the radicals push through a harsher reconstruction.

This is not however remotely going to balance the massive loss of following from getting its main base of support among segregationist Southern whites crushed. Until the New Deal coalition takes shape, without its Solid South, the Democratics are truly emperiled as major party, there is a very good chance that another party (Populists ? Socialists ? Progressives ?) rises to upstage them as the rival of the GOP.
 
For many years, the Democratic Party won only the South, with the Republicans controlling the rest.

The Democrats in TTL will have to be responsive to the desires/votes of the economically-upgraded poor whites and freedmen or the party will die. They already got blamed in OTL for the Civil War and the Klan ("bloody shirt").

We might end up with a period of one-party GOP rule until they get really corrupt and someone challenges them.
 
My picture of a successful reconstruction does require large scale land redistribution.

I think that the Democratic party is screwed in part because it does much worse in the South. It would not be able to carry black majority states like Mississsippi and South Carolina and it may well be that coalitions including former slaves would usually defeat them in places like Tennessee, and North Carolina.

I see a period of Repbulican domination. However there would be tensions in party. It guess either it would split or would be challenged.

I assume that the mainstream Republicans would follow the OTL approach of supporting the robber barons in the last third of the 19th century. In due course populists and progressives would challenge and eventually defeat them.

Alternatively if the Republicans kept their egalitarian element influentual a more conservative movement would in due course emerge and sometimes win elections.
 
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