Reconstruction was, simply, one of this nation's earliest examples of a
miserable, failed government program.
So cruel, so horrific, so unjust, so stupidly handled that it severly hurt
the very people it was supposed to help.
Not unlike Lyndon Johnson's Great Society which we will not go into here and
now but did perpetrate upon masses of helpless African Americans a system
that brought them further into intense poverty and dysfunctional familial
patterns that shall haunt them for many, many generations to come.
It is impossible not to see the comparisons between the two areas of
"reconstruction".
DF Mills
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 12:22 PM
Subject: Re: Nicholas Lemann's "Redemption"
> Whether by generally non-violent means in Virginia, or by far more blatant
> tactics in the Deep South, Reconstruction was undone, as described by
> Lemann's
> book, Ayers's review, and most of the posters on this topic, from various
> points of view.
>
> Why it was allowed to happen? White Southerners had just gotten their
> clocks
> cleaned rather thoroughly, more so than any other Americans before or
> since.
> The North could have done anything it wished. Were whites in the North,
> and
> their government, able to win the war, but not prepared to win the peace,
> or
> willing to spend and sacrifice what that victory would have taken? From a
> certain perspective, it looks like they were unwilling to "stay the
> course," but
> chose to "cut and run." Or pehaps, they just did not care very much about
> the
> freedmen.
>
> Or pehaps the situation in the South (like Iraq) was unwinnable.
>
> I'm reminded of another war we lost. Sidney Lens dedicated The Forging of
> the American Empire (1971) "To the children of Vietnam, who are being
> murdered
> and maimed by my government--and yours."
>
> Michael B. Chesson
> U/Mass-Boston
>
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