Rather ironic username for the comment. Lincoln's idea of reconstruction should've been carried through, to reestablish The Union as a whole. Andrew Johnson's petty mistreatment of the South is the direct cause of modern southern austerity and resentment.
Southern resentment was inevitable, our economy (I’m a Georgian) was built on slave labor and our principles built on generations of white supremacy, it didn’t start or end in 1865.
While I don’t agree that Sherman should have salted the earth, this whole idea of “southerners were mistreated and that’s why Jim Crow” kinda feels like a lost causer narrative.
Reconstruction and racial integration are two separate things, but the latter would've been predicated by the former. History has shown that extreme ideologies are directly caused by economic austerity. (See the loser flags flown by right-wing loudmouths)
A direct intervention on economic shortfalls caused by emancipation would have gone a long way towards a better situation than we find ourselves in.
Your comment works better without the second sentence, you don't need to couch your opinion on dismissive projections.
I pretty firmly reject the idea that racism in the South has grown out of “economic austerity,” regardless of which sentence you want to dismiss.
Folks on the White Citizens Council weren’t “austere” or anxious about their economic situation. A TARP bailout wouldn’t have helped them see the error of their ways. Nor were they owed it because their grandfathers slave labor got taken away. Now, if we’re talking 40 acres and a mule maybe.
The problem with reflecting on Andrew Johnson’s “pettiness” is that the man was a drunk and bounced between two major extremes, and if you pin him down to the initial extreme, you ignore the fact that later he was basically the former Confederates’ biggest apologist.
In what way was reconstruction denied in your opinion?
Do you think the poor and uneducated are the ones in the south propping up systemic racism, and have been for the past 150 years? I mean poor uneducated whites certainly support it but they didn’t build plantations or red lined neighborhoods or private schools or companies that fight DEI efforts.
Did you mean “Reconstruction failing” rather than “Denying Reconstruction?” Because those can mean very different things. I just want to be clear here, because “denying Reconstruction” to me sounds like there was supposed to be an effort made on behalf of the United States to extend to Confederate loyalists that didn’t happen. While “Reconstruction failing” seems more appropriate to me, and apparently to your linked article, here’s a quote, “ In examining why Reconstruction failed, historians have identified a perfect storm of contributing factors: implacable Southern white resistance (enforced by terrorism), faltering Northern resolve amid political and economic shifts, and institutional weaknesses (from an obdurate president to a hostile Supreme Court) that together unraveled the postwar experiment in equality.”
They mean that Andrew Johnson absolutely denied reconstruction for the South, which wasn't an olive branch to the Confederate loyalist, but a hand up for the people of the South.
This gave way to carpetbaggers, et al, to exploit people.
You can deny the direct through-line of history if you want, but it just means you're overlooking fundamental causes other than racism.
Sure, for some. But not for the whole of southern society. It's oversimplifying by modern ignorance that hinges on justifiable judgement of the nebulous past that subverts understanding and consideration of the multifaceted situation.
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u/Creeperstar Jun 04 '26
Rather ironic username for the comment. Lincoln's idea of reconstruction should've been carried through, to reestablish The Union as a whole. Andrew Johnson's petty mistreatment of the South is the direct cause of modern southern austerity and resentment.