As we move further into the sesquicentennial anniversary year of the American Civil War, there are quite a few interesting things to consider. The New York Times has been running their Disunion series for a number of weeks now and it is truly fascinating. Even USA TODAY, which I tend not to read unless stuck in an airport, weighed in with a very good look at the subject. The Secession Ball was a not-to-miss event if you happened to be Charleston, SC. Maybe in four more years, they'll burn down the city again!
On a more scholarly note, I happen to be reading a book right now titled How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War by Dominic Tierney. Haven't finished it yet, but did get through the chapter that is relevant to this post. Tierney picks the Civil War as his starting point, and does an excellent job of analyzing the glaring difference between how the war was fought, and the way in which the peace was lost. Meaning that the Union was infused with a powerful crusading spirit so long as the fighting was continuing, but the people of the North did not have the will or the patience to see the project through to the end.
The Reconstruction period that followed the end of hostilities is barely remembered today. If it is remembered, the perception is of a failed experiment marked by "scalawags", "carpetbaggers", and rampant corruption. While elements of all these things did exist, that is not quite the entire story. Dominic Tierney offers a novel treatment of the Reconstruction era. Tierney presents it as America's first attempt at what we today call "nation-building". And that is an excellent way to describe Reconstruction.
In April of 1865, the South lay largely in ruins. The region's entire social structure had been completely upended. It's economy and physical infrastructure was wrecked. Never was there a more opportune time for the victors to go about reordering the system, and rebuilding the South in their own image. Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln was murdered and his vice-president Andrew Johnson was not the man to impose such a peace. When Grant took office, progress was finally being made, but precious time had been lost.
What followed was a sad litany of Southern white resistance, puncuated by acts of extreme terrorism, aimed at returning blacks to their former status. The people of the North eventually tired of the whole dismal enterprise and the last federal troops were removed from the region in 1877. Blacks ended up waiting another century to finally receive the whole range of rights guaranteed them by the Constitution.
Dominic Tierney poses a very provocative question towards the end of the chapter. He asks how much worse could the Reconstruction government have been then the one that led the region into a catastrophic war in 1861?
What a shock! The massive government program called "reconstruction" did not go so well.
ReplyDeleteGovernment programs have such a good track record that I would think it would have gone smoothly, would have been completed under budget, and have been very successful.
Well, the federal government did a splendid job of marshaling the men and material needed to crush the rebellion. Unfortunately, the people of the North did not have the endless patience that would have been necessary to establish a civilized social order in the states of the former Confederacy. A devil's bargain was struck between Northern business interests and Southern Whites, one that was consummated on the backs of the former slaves.
ReplyDeleteThe large plantations should have been broken up and the land distributed to the blacks. Federal troops should have remained in the South for at least 25 years to keep the peace. The South was in no position to complain having just been beaten soundly in a war that they started. Grant should have made Sherman a "Reconstruction Czar" and given him broad powers to work his will on the unredeemed elements of the South.
That is how it should have been done, and the country would have been spared 100 years of shame owing to the system of apartheid that existed in the South. "Jim Crow" does a very poor job of describing a repressive system that enforced it's will on black people by means of extreme violence.