I must disagree with country.gardens about Reconstruction.  It was the
necessary outcome of the Civil War, which was a revolution of sorts.  With
the destruction of an entire labor regime--remember that there were more
slaves age 11 and older than there were wage workers of any race age 11 and
over as late as the Census of 1850--the southern world was turned upside
down.  The economy and polity had to be reconstructed.  Certainly, most
white southerners and most Democrats nationwide wanted as little change as
possible.  That was the conservative position then:  return power to the
states, don't interfere with questions of personal status in civil society,
don't elevate people of color to equal citizenship.

The North had taken grievous losses during the War.  As 1865 turned into
1866, northern public opinion demanded more concessions made to Emancipation
and ultimately enfranchisement.  The radical faction among Republicans in
Congress, perhaps a minority, had the moral high ground.  They pushed
through a major legislative and constituional amendment project that
transformed American law, if not immediately the nation itself.

Congress also created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land
inside the War Department.  The agents of the BRFAL supervised the process
of freedpeople moving from slave to wage labor, family registration, travel
to original family area, and a number of other necessary service.

But it is needless to go on.  If one subject has been settled by brilliant
scholarship, the nature of Reconstruction has been.  Start with Eric Foner's
Reconstruction and read on.

Harold S. Forsythe
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2006 12:54 PM
Subject: Re: Nicholas Lemann's "Redemption"


> 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
>>
>> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
>> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>>
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html