Remembering the Confederacy Too Fondly

[CajunBlazer]

With all of the recent discussion about the confederate flag and the arguments used by some flag supporters, recalled a post that I made in March a local sports site. After someone veered off topic during a sports discussion to complain about attacks on on his "Southern heritage", complaining how the South was mistreated after the Civil War, and comparing the leaders of the Confederacy to the patriots who founded our great country. (Yep, people with those views still exist.) I normally would have posted something like "Let's stay on topic, but he stuck a nerve. This was my reply which I also posted on my blog.

Lincoln's plans to rehabilitate the South were far gentler and kinder than "Radical Republicans" who took over the party after Lincoln's death. Most historians believe that if Lincoln had lived he would have had political power the keep the Radical Republicans at bay, but his predecessor Andrew Johnson obviously did not. Johnson did his best to fight them off in Congress, but he was politically weak. Eventually the radicals impeached him in the House of Representatives and he was nearly convicted by the Senate. There is no way that would have happened to Lincoln.

With a weak President Johnson in the White House and later with their own man, Ulysses S. Grant, in the Oval Office, the Radical Republicans ran roughshod over the South for several years. They also ensured that the Democratic Party would ruled in the South for many decades to come.

On another issue, I have always had a problem with Southerns who equate the Civil War with the American Revolution. Unlike the colonists who had no representation in the British Royal Court or the English Parliament which imposed on them unpopular and unjust taxes and laws, the Southern states were properly represented in a functioning democracy.

Had they been able to continue to have their way through the elective and legislative process, as they did for a long time, the Southern states would have never considered succeeding from the Union. It was only when they realized that the popular vote was going against them, especially with the election of Lincoln, did they decide to go their own way.

How long would any democratic country survive if anytime a portion of the population doesn't like how the rest of the country is voting they decide to break away and form their own county? If that were allowed, democracies would be the most unstable government systems known to man.

Had the Confederacy had been successful in breaking away, instead of one great nation we would have had two lesser countries with, at least for many years, diametrically opposed political philosophies.

More at: http://www.cajunscomments.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=574&action=edit

[NOLALady]

1. Also,

"Had the Confederacy had been successful in breaking away,"... a war would have been on the horizon eventually. It was only a matter of time before a full widescale successful revolt.

[HooptieWagon]

2. Reconstruction....

I am only up on Floridas history, not the other states. Florida had only been a state for 15 years when the Civil War broke out. It was a slave state, and among the first few to secede. However, Floridas population was very small, and the state largely an undeveloped frontier. Florida was largely unaffected by the war, only a few skirmishes were fought here.
Reconstruction did bring a few positives... namely that former slaves were freed, could acquire land, and vote and run for office. Many did. However, the reconstruction governments were incredibly corrupt, and pretty much threw open the doors to the states treasury and resources to various northern con men and looters that devastated the state. Remnants of those actions still have an adverse effect today, in the vast private land-holdings of the timber and mining companies. These were lands held by homesteaders, whose promised titles were stripped away so the land could be sold for pennies on the dollar to pay off fraudulent bonds the state backed through bribery. And then of course, once the Reconstructionists left, there was a vacuum in govt and the state suffered through a period of incredible violence. There were lynchings, assassinations, etc... much like what happened in Iraq.

[CajunBlazer]

3. After Reconstruction...

I certainly by no means meant to underestimate the damage down to the South during Reconstruction. After Reconstruction The South began to slowly recover, but the political freedom which the former slaves had enjoyed in the ten or so years after the Civil War also began to disappear.

With the Union army gone, organizations like the KKK and several others, which traced their roots back to the Reconstruction period , regularly used violence and intimidation to reduce the number of black voters to a trickle. In the South segregation was given enshrined in state and local laws and while blacks were certainly kept separate they were by no means treated equally. Poll taxes, literacy tests and other discriminatory practices were incorporated into voting laws to hold down the black vote ensuring the status quo.

That sad state of affairs continued for nearly a hundred years until things began to change with the advent of the civil rights laws in the mid 1960's. We have come a long way in the last 50 years, but the events in Charleston remind us that we have some distance to go before we can remove the hate which still burns in the hearts of some people.

[HooptieWagon]

4. Yes, true.

However, there was plenty of white on white violence too. There was no effective govt or law enforcement, it all was horribly corrupt. Florida, post Reconstruction, made the "Wild West" look like a church picnic. This happened where I grew up. I know descendants of the gang and victims:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarasota_Assassination_Society