Why Did We Abandon Reconstruction?

[Andrew D]

The results speak for themselves.

[Andrew D]

All eleven of the treasonous States -- the States of the so-called Confederacy -- have college graduation rates lower than the national average. And that is true even though the treasonous States drag down the national average.

[Andrew D]

Ten of the treasonous States -- the States of the so-called Confederacy -- have infant mortality rates higher than the national average. And that is true even though the treasonous States drag down the national average.

[Andrew D]

Nine of the treasonous States -- the States of the so-called Confederacy -- have illiteracy rates higher than the national average. And that is true even though the treasonous States drag down the national average.

[rubato]

These points have all been made before. so?

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

Sorry, rubato. I forgot for a moment that it's all about you.

[dgs49]

I wonder how those stats would look if you discounted the large and ethnically uniform swath of the population that has, over the past 50 years - and largely due to well-intentioned Government assistance programs - overwhelmingly adopted disastrous lifestyle choices that condemn both themselves and their progeny to lifetime poverty, extraordinarily high rates of substance abuse, incarceration, unemployment, illiteracy, and so on. I have it on good authority, in fact, tha this swath of the population has an illegitimacy rate of approximately 70% (probably more) within the geographical confines of the "treasonous States."

But then, I suppose it is possible that "racism," and/or The White Man forces such women of child-bearing age to bear children when they have neither a husband nor any real prospect of supporting their illegitimate offspring.

Carry on.

[dgs49]

And I forgot to mention that this plague of illegitimacy blossomed about a hundred years after the end of the War between the States, thus it has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery or its aftermath.

[rubato]

Sorry, rubato. I forgot for a moment that it's all about you.

The states of the old south are the worst by almost every objective measure of health, education, safety, human development &c. Granted. We've seen that data a lot of times here. So what is your point?

And yes, you can be pissy.

We've seen that before too.

What is your point?



yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

Well to answer the question: After almost a decade of insurgency which included murder, targeted assassinations, ambushes and general terrorism, the Yankees finally decided it wasn’t worth it and went home. Does anyone see a patterned here considering Vietnam; I personally think that that general marshal’s justification for droppings the atomic bomb on Japan was correct. He said that democracies can’t fight long wars. I supposed that the North could have won if they had been willing to speed enough money, deploy enough troops and use tactic such as concentration camps. But the north was just not willing to do that and torture and targeted killing just was not enough to break the resistance. I believe the situation could have been avoided if the North had chosen a policy of reconciliation instead of revenge and if Lincoln had not been assassinated that is the way it might have been.

[Rick]

Shoulda just walked by Lib, it was bait...

[dgs49]

Another possible avenue of pointless speculation is how it would have turned out if the President had concluded that the seceding states had the right to do so, and just let it happen. How long would it have taken for slavery to fall on its economic face, and what form would emancipation have taken? Perhaps the Confederacy would have created a sub-classification of citizen called, "Niggra" or something and...never mind.

[liberty]

Shoulda just walked by Lib, it was bait...

I know but where would have been the fun in that; we come here for stimulation not to avoid a discussion. History is history and anyone who can not approach the subject with detachment shouldn’t engage in the discussion.

[dales]

You mean, herstory.

[Andrew D]

Well to answer the question: After almost a decade of insurgency which included murder, targeted assassinations, ambushes and general terrorism, the Yankees finally decided it wasn’t worth it and went home.

But that is not why Reconstruction ended, liberty. Reconstruction ended as part of a political deal in which the Republican party sold its civil-libertarian soul in exchange for getting a Republican President. As the World Almanac and Book of Facts puts it:

In 1876, [Republican Rutherford B.] Hayes was nominated for president and believed [that] he had lost the election to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. But a few Southern states submitted two sets of electoral votes, and the result was in dispute. An electoral commission, consisting of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats, awarded all disputed votes to Hayes, allowing him to become president by one electoral vote. Hayes, keeping a promise to Southerners, withdrew troops from areas still occupied in the South, ending the era of Reconstruction.

So my opening question might be better phrased as:

When We Abandoned Reconstruction, What The Hell Were We Thinking?

My point in raising the modern South's social deficiencies was, of course, to suggest that they are, in substantial part, the products of the abandonment of Reconstruction.

That abandonment also had other negative consequences. The Reconstruction Amendments (U.S. Const., Amdts. XIII, XIV, and XV) were adopted because the South had, after its defeat in the Civil War, enacted various pieces of legislation designed to come as close as possible to retain slavery in fact, though not in name. Our abandonment of Reconstruction delayed the effective implementation of those Amendments, with respect to black people in the South, from the 1870s to the 1960s.

Our abandonment of Reconstruction also gave rise to the rise of the Jim Crow regime. That regime was, of course, administered by Democrats, but that is because Reconstruction was a Republican thing. Had the Democrats administered (inflicted, if you prefer) Reconstruction, the Republicans would have run Jim Crow.

It is, after all, not an accident that when the Democrats became the party of civil rights -- a change regarded with considerable mystification in the South -- hordes of Democratic politicians and Democratic office holders flocked to the Republican party. The Republican party's Civil-War-and-Reconstruction-Era commitment to civil rights evaporated with (or, more precisely, even before) the abandonment of Reconstruction. Whether it has ever reemerged is open to question.

[MajGenl.Meade]

So er.... shit happened? And guess what...?

[rubato]

This site says that reconstruction failed when (inferentially was caused by) federal troops were removed from the South:
http://www.sparknotes.com/history/ameri ... ion1.rhtml

The Failure of Reconstruction

However, opposition from President Andrew Johnson, a conservative Supreme Court, and the white southern elite thwarted Radical Republicans’ attempts at protecting blacks’ rights. Johnson, for example, disbanded the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Then, in the complex maneuvering of the Compromise of 1877 , Republicans traded the presidency (the election of Rutherford B. Hayes) for the premature withdrawal of federal troops from the South. This compromise effectively ended Reconstruction and set back the hope of equality for southern blacks for decades. Within a few short years, the powerful white elite had returned to power in southern legislatures and had reinstated its racist policies in the South.

This site agrees that was when the failure happened but has different theories about cause and effect; some are sloppiliy argued.

http://www.thehistoryconnection.com/Rec ... ilure.html

12 years was not long enough time to need an outside agent with the ability to exercise force to allow for the transition of blacks to full equality in the south. 12 Years after the overthrow of a brutal and corrupt regime in the Confederacy (Afghanistan) southern Christian racists (the Taliban) were able to re-deploy systematic terrorism to effectively destroy any chance of liberal democracy with civil rights for all.

It does make me think differently about removing troops from Afghanistan. If we pull out all troops and Afghanistan achieves a reasonable level of civil justice in less than 100 years they will have done better than we did.

The crime the rest of the country committed was to leave the South to their own devices and stop paying attention. If we pull out of Afghanistan and say "it's their problem let them fix it" are we doing the same thing again?

The comparison between the Taliban and the Southern Christians is fairly strong, both are brutal fanatics and both are intolerant of other religions and even other sects within their own religion. The KKK attacked both Jews and Catholics and used iconography to demonize both of them. The KKK also supported ignorance by attacking educated blacks, just as the Taliban attacks schools teaching girls.


yrs,
rubato

[dales]

The comparison between the Taliban and the Southern Christians is fairly strong....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah....blah...etc

[rubato]

If you scroll down you can see two KKK belt buckles depicting Klan members attacking Catholic figures. In one they are attacking a dragon with papal regalia and in the other they are cutting down a tree marked "Rome".

http://www.snyderstreasures.com/pages/kkk.htm

[dales]

Only a nit-wit could compare Southern Christian churches to the KKK or the Taliban.