
The Civil War After the Civil War - smacktoward
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/04/after_appomattox_by_gregory_downs_reviewed.single.html
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rayiner
The U.S. experience with slavery and civil rights is pretty much why I don't
believe in anarchist or anarcho-libertarian principles. People organized into
institutions have a greater capacity for good than people left to their own
devices. And sometimes those institutions have to drag people into the future
by burning everything down and instilling virtue at the point of a bayonet. I
sometimes think that if Congress hadn't pissed all over the Constitution's
federalist design in the 1960's, we'd still have segregation today.

~~~
bmelton
> I sometimes think that if Congress hadn't pissed all over the Constitution's
> federalist design in the 1960's, we'd still have segregation today.

I don't, but only because, at best, I see the actions of Congress as a lagging
indicator of societal will. That enough people in society demanded Congress
act enough to force them into action enough to piss all over federalism is
indicative that society had already come along and made its point. Had there
not been enough people wanting it, Congress wouldn't have acted.

I mean, unless we take it as a given that the CRA's biggest aim (by the
government) was really a ploy to grab additional power at the expense of the
Commerce Clause.

~~~
harryh
Have you read about what desegregation of schools in Alabama was like? That
certainly doesn't sound like a society that was ready for federal action. The
National Guard was federalized and had to push aside the Governor and crowds
of protesting white people.

~~~
bmelton
I have. That some people clearly weren't ready for it doesn't mean that the
majority of society wasn't.

That said, despite all the negative publicity, there were plenty of
sympathizers in Alabama happily swimming against the tide in favor of
desegregation.

~~~
harryh
What constitutes society though? The majority of the US as a whole? The
majority of Alabama? The majority of the city of Tuscaloosa?

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ancap
It's hard to read an article on history when the first paragraph has a glaring
falsehood:

>Most historians, though, acknowledge that the war’s most ambitious aim—full
equality for black citizens

Quote from Lincoln:

>If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same
time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not
save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not
agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,
and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union
without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving
others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored
race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I
forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

~~~
smacktoward
That quote is a bit misleading when taken out of context.

Early in the war, there were a lot of conservative Northern Democrats who felt
that, while crushing the rebellion was a valid war aim, going beyond that to
emancipation of the slaves was not. They felt that insisting on emancipation
would poison any chance of ever reintegrating the South into the Union. Since
Lincoln was the first President ever elected by the then-new Republican party,
which had a strong pro-emancipation faction, these conservatives tended to
view Lincoln as a potentially dangerous radical whose ideology could
potentially sabotage the war effort.

At the war's opening Lincoln tended to agree with them. But a year of hard
fighting that saw a string of Northern defeats changed his thinking. He began
to feel that only by embracing a higher goal than political union could the
North seize the moral high ground it would need to keep its people from giving
up in frustration. So he slowly began to swing towards emancipation.

However, it was critical while he was making that swing that word of it not
leak out, since if it was revealed prematurely, without the right buildup, it
could shock the conservatives into bolting from the national unity coalition
of Republicans and Democrats together that he had assembled at the start of
the war. So even as he was drafting what became the Emancipation Proclamation,
he was furiously insisting to anyone who asked that he intended nothing of the
sort. (The quote you cited comes from an open letter Lincoln wrote during this
period to a prominent conservative New York newspaper editor named Horace
Greeley as part of this PR effort -- see
[http://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/news/letter-president-
linc...](http://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/news/letter-president-lincoln-
reply-horace-greeley-slavery-union-restoration-union.html))

It worked, at least as well as it needed to work; while the conservatives
never really trusted Lincoln, they couldn't ever pin him down on the slavery
issue either. And by the time he revealed his shift, it was clear to everyone
that the conservatives' dream that the South could be reconciled with sweet
words and restraint was a fantasy -- the South was in earnest, they were
playing for keeps, and the only way they would be brought back into the union
was with fire and sword.

~~~
shaftoe
Ignoring the issue of slavery for a moment (which the North was not initially
attempting to abolish), did they have any right to force the South to "be
brought back into the union with fire and sword?"

Can lawfully elected governments not dissolve political bonds?

What makes a government not even 70 years old so important that cities must be
razed and hundreds of thousands killed to preserve it? Was it even preserved
when half the country was in a military dictatorship?

~~~
mikeash
There is ultimately no law and no right between nations, except persuasion and
force.

The moment the South separated, they willingly subjected themselves to that.
If they wanted someone to step in and say, hey, you can't do that, then they
should have remained a part of the system that provided exactly that.

You can't declare yourself a separate nation, then get upset when you're
treated like it.

~~~
selimthegrim
If you try to ground Southern secession in standard international law
principles of self-determination and consider it at the state level you run
into problems of both white franchise and....er another 3/5th of a problem
rather quickly....

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Crito
I am skeptical that we can learn any practical lessons from the relative
success of Reconstruction. There was a lot more in play there beyond military
occupation. After the war, the South shared a massive porous border with the
economically dominant progressive North. Furthermore, you had that progressive
North participating in the democratic processes of the occupied South (as the
article and apparently the book talk about). Nothing like any of that happens
with modern US invasions and occupations.

~~~
jackfoxy
>>Nothing like any of that happens with modern US invasions and occupations.

The post WWII occupations of Germany and Japan?

~~~
Crito
Germany perhaps, but not Japan. With Germany it is difficult to say since the
post-war split of Germany is something that doesn't have a great analogue in
Reconstruction. Japan did not have a porous border with the US, and although
there was nevertheless a large amount of cultural exchange following the war,
it was nothing compared to what occurred between the North and South in the
US. Furthermore, while American individuals involved themselves with Japan's
government following the war, that was not general American voting public
doing it; it was only a handful of people. Having a MacArthur from the
conquering nation and having to share a government with the conquering nation
are rather dissimilar. The Japanese public were not voting for American
leaders, and the American public were not voting for Japanese leaders.
American and Japanese leaders were not regularly engaging in debate, nor were
they forced to reconcile differences in their domestic policies.

However I would not consider either of those a _modern_ US invasion/occupation
anyway. We don't really fight/invade/occupy like that anymore.

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wvgs_
Reconstruction kind of loses it's historical grit when we frame it solely as
the battle for equality. I know modern historian have an obligation to hunt
down, expose, and destroy the Neo-Confederates' lost cause mythos, but leaving
out just how insane and chaotic that time was does the entire historical
narrative an injustice.

