WI: Union Punishes Most Confederate Leadership After the US Civil War?

[usertron2020]

But the Deep South men on offer were a pretty poor bunch. Not that the Deep South didn't have any decent politicians. But Sam Houston and Judah Benjamin weren't in the running, either.

Sam Houston was a devout Unionist, who was removed from the governorship for his anti-Secessionist principles. Just goes to show: If George Washington had been alive, a Unionist, and serving as governor of Virginia, he would have been driven out of office too.

Judah Benjaminm was Jewish. Nuff said.

It seems that nations have some kind of cyclical pattern to the good vs. bad levels of their leadership.

Frex: The USA

Good:
Founding Fathers, Washington through Monroe, LINCOLN, FDR through JFK

Bad (or mixed): post-Monroe through to Buchanan including the worst of all, the Three Midwives of the American Civil War (Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan), the Gilded Age, 20th century through to Hoover, LBJ to GHW Bush, W

The UK? (My knowledge here is limited, and corrections would be appreciated)

Good: The leadership of the Seven Years War, the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, post-Napoleon through the Great Reform Act of 1832, Disraeli, Churchill, Atlee, Wilson, and...opinions?

Bad: Lord North (special Honorable Mention to the ARW Loyal Opposition, IMO the finest most talented LO Britain ever knew), Lord Palmerston (IMO the Chauncey Gardner/Chance the gardiner of British leaders), the Three Midwives of World War Two (Baldwin, MacDonald, Chamberlain), Anthony Eden, and...opinions?

Pleads Ignorance or may be a mixed bag depending on your own opinions:

Gladstone, other 19th century PMs, 20th century pre-Lloyd-George, Lloyd-George, post-Wilson

DEFINITELY MIXED BAG/OPINION: Thatcher and forward.

Opinions?

 

[leopard9]

That might work with blacks, but the poor southern whites had too deep an investment in their identity to easily shake. They had just died and suffered in unprecedented (in American history, certainly) numbers by way of proof. And even in the postwar environment, they had the comfort of still not being at the bottom of the class structure pole of the South. Now you'd be taking that away from them.

There were certainly large-scale resettlement schemes mooted in the North during the war. But they all would have involved a massive expenditure of resources on par with the war itself. And the kind of social engineering involved would have required a different kind of government, effectively a continued wartime government. Not least because you'd need a robust military occupation for decades to make it stick. There was just no real appetite for that in the North.

But their relative socioeconomic position in society would actually be improving as they got a bigger plot of land to farm. The confiscation and redistribution of Planter land would be a one time thing driven by the fact that most of them would either be executed or exiled for seceding by the Union, not for simply disagreeing with the federal government. And with the Planter Class largely extinct, they could be a convenient (and accurate!) scapegoat for working class whites to blame their troubles on. The narrative writes itself: the honest, hardworking people of the working class were led into a false war by the decadent Planter Class who couldn't even be bothered to send their sons off to die in a horrific war, like true Southerners would. All the Fed. Government has to do is redirect the working class white anger away from the Union and black people and to the Planter Class.

And as for resettling people, that wouldn't really be necessary from the North but actually from abroad. Encourage Europeans to live in the South, perhaps the coastal cities.

TL;DR: Everyone wins. Blacks get their freedom and an economic jump start, working class whites get more economic power, the Federal Government gets rid of the people that caused the mess, and the wartorn Southern coastal cities get an influx of eager hardworking immigrants to rebuild them.

 

[Athelstane]

Sam Houston was a devout Unionist, who was removed from the governorship for his anti-Secessionist principles. Just goes to show: If George Washington had been alive, a Unionist, and serving as governor of Virginia, he would have been driven out of office too.

Judah Benjaminm was Jewish. Nuff said.

Which is why they were both out of the running.

(Houston was probably too old for it anyway, I suppose.)

It seems that nations have some kind of cyclical pattern to the good vs. bad levels of their leadership.

Frex: The USA

Good:
Founding Fathers, Washington through Monroe, LINCOLN, FDR through JFK

Bad (or mixed): post-Monroe through to Buchanan including the worst of all, the Three Midwives of the American Civil War (Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan), the Gilded Age, 20th century through to Hoover, LBJ to GHW Bush, W

In truth, most of the 19th century was a lackluster bunch in the White House, even from Adams Senior onward. But it usually didn't matter, since so little was at stake. The country was protected by the Royal Navy from foreign invasion, and was too busy settling the West and industrializing to worry about much else.

The obvious exception was the outbreak of the Civil War and Reconstruction, where bad presidencies turned out to be expensive. Yet even that didn't really hold things back.

Where America really struck gold was with the Founding Fathers. So much genius in one political generation.

I'll pass on the 20th century, so as to keep the thread from being moved into Chat.

 

[Athelstane]

But their relative socioeconomic position in society would actually be improving as they got a bigger plot of land to farm. The confiscation and redistribution of Planter land would be a one time thing driven by the fact that most of them would either be executed or exiled for seceding by the Union, not for simply disagreeing with the federal government. And with the Planter Class largely extinct, they could be a convenient (and accurate!) scapegoat for working class whites to blame their troubles on. The narrative writes itself: the honest, hardworking people of the working class were led into a false war by the decadent Planter Class who couldn't even be bothered to send their sons off to die in a horrific war, like true Southerners would. All the Fed. Government has to do is redirect the working class white anger away from the Union and black people and to the Planter Class.

Well, in the first place, most of the Planter class was basically ruined by the war. Most of their real property had basically walked off, and Sherman and friends burned whatever was left. (Which was remarkably effective at ending said war.)

The South didn't really fully recover from the war for a good four generations or so. I'm not sure how redistributing the same property (largely overworked from cotton and tobacco cultivation anyway) around to a new bunch of impoverished farmers would have helped much. Those who really wanted a new start headed out west anyway.

I think at our remove of a century and a half it's hard to underestimate how deeply ingrained attitudes were. As Gary Gallagher has noted, the loyalty of poor yeoman farmers to the Cause, various Appalachian pockets of Unionists notwithstanding, really was profound. And it forged a cultural identity (and attendant grievances) that lasted for a long time thereafter.

 

[Mikestone8]

The Federal government is the enemy they've been fighting for the last four years. It has no power to "deflect" their opinions on any subject.

 

[TFSmith121]

Yeah, but...

I think at our remove of a century and a half it's hard to underestimate how deeply ingrained attitudes were. As Gary Gallagher has noted, the loyalty of poor yeoman farmers to the Cause, various Appalachian pockets of Unionists notwithstanding, really was profound. And it forged a cultural identity (and attendant grievances) that lasted for a long time thereafter.

Yeah, but...fusion politics was a real phenomenon.

Granted, it rarely lasted, but George Henry White was elected to Congress as late as 1898...Populists and Republicans did surprisingly well, considering the level of opposition, even as late as the 1890s.

Something similar was possible earlier.

Best,

 

[Mikestone8]

I think at our remove of a century and a half it's hard to underestimate how deeply ingrained attitudes were. As Gary Gallagher has noted, the loyalty of poor yeoman farmers to the Cause, various Appalachian pockets of Unionists notwithstanding, really was profound. And it forged a cultural identity (and attendant grievances) that lasted for a long time thereafter.

Anyway, isn't this divide between "planters" and the rest a bit unreal?

Plenty of non-planters were the cousins or younger brothers of planters, and that doesn't reckon in various merchants whose best customers had been planters. It's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to hit planters without hitting the white population as a whole - or at least a very big section of it. Planters were not a separate caste. They were the tip of a very large iceberg.

If the South had won, and tried to expel or impoverish every Yankee who owned a factory, would that not have impacted on the Northern population at large? Afaics, it's much the same if you pick on every Southron who owns a plantation.

 

[Mikestone8]

I'm saying at the end of the day Davis was a petty tyrant and a coward not a martyr.

There's no evidence whatsoever that he was a coward.

As for "tyrant" (petty or otherwise) war leaders often tend to be autocratic. Istr that Churchill once said "All I desire is compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion". I can imagine Davis (and even maybe Lincoln) saying much the same.

 

[B_Munro]

I must be sleepy: I somehow read that as "WI: Ultron punishes most Confederate Leadership"

 

[Athelstane]

Yeah, but...fusion politics was a real phenomenon.

It was, sure. But I think you're overstating its possibilities in the antebellum South, especially in the first generation after the war. White's 2nd NC CD was pretty heavily black, and that's how he got elected.

 

[Athelstane]

There's no evidence whatsoever that he was a coward.

As for "tyrant" (petty or otherwise) war leaders often tend to be autocratic. Istr that Churchill once said "All I desire is compliance with my wishes after reasonable discussion". I can imagine Davis (and even maybe Lincoln) saying much the same.

Davis was a) a pretty unlikable fellow who b) fought for and led what U.S. Grant called "one of the worst causes" in modern history and c) had some pretty serious deficiencies as a strategist and leader. And yes, by our standards, he was certainly a racist. People seem to generally assume the worst of him on all counts as a result, especially due to (b).

But Davis was not without his virtues, and he repeatedly showed that courage, at least, was among them, along with a certain sense of honor. It's also true that Davis's government wasn't any more tyrannical, properly speaking, than Lincoln's; we forgive the latter, or at least overlook it, because it was in the service of good causes.

And to get back to the thread topic: it was because of a greater awareness of those virtues even by many Northern leaders (many of whom had served with him in high office), and a certain decency among them that there was really little appetite, especially after the passions of the war cooled off after the first year or so, to try and execute Davis (and his political and military leaders), or incarcerate him for life, at least. I think any timeline taking the spring of 1865 as its departure point will have a difficult time making a policy like that take off. You might be able to manage it with an earlier POD where the war takes a more bitter turn, and Lincoln is taken out of the picture, as Harry Turtledove did; but even that would have contend with a real necessity for a long-term military occupation and a much more robust state power, with serious risks of mutating into a police state.

 

[Athelstane]

So how is what the South did not an insurgency? It's the textbook definition of one. It just happens to put the Moonlight and Magnolias into the same historical club as the VC - but why is that such an unmentionable thing?

If there's no one shooting at or blowing up state officials - police, magistrates, soldiers, etc. - or doing the same to state property, it's hard for me to say that fits any reasonable definition of "insurgency." Now, it fits "sectarian strife" or "civil strife" pretty well, as well as plenty of common law and statutory definitions of criminal violence.

And no question that it was very ugly, and we rightly criticize federal authorities for not doing more to stop it.* It would be worth examining, however, how much worse that violence was compared to other regions, and the 19th century generally, to better assess it in context. (I do not have those answers; I am just raising the question.)

* One of my solutions would have been to turn over the hundreds of thousands of firearms confiscated from surrendering Confederate troops to freed slaves, at least mentally competent adult male heads of household, at any rate. Harder to lynch a man who's got a shotgun or Colt 45 to point back at you.

 

[TFSmith121]

"The first generation" really depends

It was, sure. But I think you're overstating its possibilities in the antebellum South, especially in the first generation after the war. White's 2nd NC CD was pretty heavily black, and that's how he got elected.

"The first generation" after Appomatox would depend on how heavy the Reconstruction regimes controlled political power at the state level, certainly, but Grant's policies showed it could be done; couple that level of federal control with accomodationist politics along Fusion lines and a stronger line taken against ex-rebels (somewhere between history and "deport or execute 'em all") and I think it is arguable the rule of law could have been sustained in the ex-rebel states from 1865 onward. That may be a high bar, but I don't think it was unreachable, and I think the GOP's policies toward the South after Grant's Administration could have been more forceful, not less ... the point of departure is placing Johnson on the ticket in 1864, I think.

Best,

 

[usertron2020]

Fair fights are for suckers

I must be sleepy: I somehow read that as "WI: Ultron punishes most Confederate Leadership"

THERE ARE NO STRINGS ON ME

* One of my solutions would have been to turn over the hundreds of thousands of firearms confiscated from surrendering Confederate troops to freed slaves, at least mentally competent adult male heads of household, at any rate. Harder to lynch a man who's got a shotgun or Colt 45 to point back at you.

Not going to do much good if they are coming at you masked, outnumbering you twenty to one, at 3 AM. Especially when you are considering that these first generation KKKers were so balled up in blind hate that they were more than willing to see the first and second of their own number die coming through the front door in order to kill their lynching target. "casualties of war", is all. Not to mention that they will always have superior numbers over all, never mind on selected night raids.

I mean really: Since when do terrorists ever fight fair?

 

[Tripwire]

Anyone executed for anything other than warcrimes would be considered martyrs in the South, and I think you'd have a Lost Cause mythology and neo-Confederate sympathies on steroids. Meanwhile hanging the high-ranking confederates would do nothing at all to relieve the oppression of the South's black population.

The Union *needed* to push a narrative of national reconciliation, and hanging any of the Confederate leadership would have dashed that.

Except for Nathan Bedford Forrest. He should have been hanged for the Fort Pillow massacre, and I think history would vindicate it.

 

[Mikestone8]

"The first generation" after Appomatox would depend on how heavy the Reconstruction regimes controlled political power at the state level, certainly, but Grant's policies showed it could be done; couple that level of federal control with accomodationist politics along Fusion lines and a stronger line taken against ex-rebels (somewhere between history and "deport or execute 'em all") and I think it is arguable the rule of law could have been sustained in the ex-rebel states from 1865 onward. That may be a high bar, but I don't think it was unreachable, and I think the GOP's policies toward the South after Grant's Administration could have been more forceful, not less ... the point of departure is placing Johnson on the ticket in 1864, I think.

Best,

How do they "sustain" anything once the Army has reverted to peacetime levels?

It's all very well to take a hard line when you've got over half a million bluecoats with which to enforce it. But once it's down to less than 30,000 - most of them needed out west - is there much you can really do except let the South do its own thing?

 

[EnglishCanuck]

How do they "sustain" anything once the Army has reverted to peacetime levels?

It's all very well to take a hard line when you've got over half a million bluecoats with which to enforce it. But once it's down to less than 30,000 - most of them needed out west - is there much you can really do except let the South do its own thing?

In theory you could use conscription to keep the army at a mandated level of say, 80,000 men, if volunteers weren't forthcoming. The only question would be is if there was enough political will to do such a thing?

However, even with a larger army none of this strikes at the excellent point usertron makes that the KKK and the night riders were terrorists, and terrorists don't fight fair. They rarely struck at the enforcers of occupation, instead striking at the people, killing judges, politicians, terrorizing freedmen and their families, Unionists, ect. The troubling fact was that as long as the night riders were largely killing blacks and not Federal troops then the political will was simply not there to do anything about it. The Union was whole, slavery ended, and to the average Northern voter that was enough.

It's like why people weren't gung-ho to start bloody reprisals against the rebel leadership, there just wasn't the will to do more. After four years of bloodshed and 800,000 deaths it isn't hard to see why people preferred to wrap things up quickly.

 

[TFSmith121]

The point of departure has to be the 1864 election

How do they "sustain" anything once the Army has reverted to peacetime levels?

It's all very well to take a hard line when you've got over half a million bluecoats with which to enforce it. But once it's down to less than 30,000 - most of them needed out west - is there much you can really do except let the South do its own thing?

The point of departure has to be a different ticket in the 1864 election, or, failing that, Lincoln not being assassinated...

Both offer enough "lead time" far enough ahead of the historical reality of post-1865 to allow for a variety of policy changes; given that, it is entirely possible a Reconstruction under Lincoln's administration, or anyone other than Johnson, is going to be a very different Reconstruction.

Best,

 

[Mikestone8]

The point of departure has to be a different ticket in the 1864 election, or, failing that, Lincoln not being assassinated...

Both offer enough "lead time" far enough ahead of the historical reality of post-1865 to allow for a variety of policy changes; given that, it is entirely possible a Reconstruction under Lincoln's administration, or anyone other than Johnson, is going to be a very different Reconstruction.

Best,

Sorry, but unless you envisage the retention of a postwar US Army vastly larger than OTL (surely ASB whoever is in the White House) then I'm not clear what difference any policy changes can make except in the very short run. Once the principal means of enforcement shrinks back to peacetime size, the options dwindle to pretty much what the White South is willing to put up with. Obviously, if they restart the war by attempting another secession, that could change matters, but the likelihood of that is zilch when they know that time is on their side.

 

[TheYoungPretender]

Not going to do much good if they are coming at you masked, outnumbering you twenty to one, at 3 AM. Especially when you are considering that these first generation KKKers were so balled up in blind hate that they were more than willing to see the first and second of their own number die coming through the front door in order to kill their lynching target. "casualties of war", is all. Not to mention that they will always have superior numbers over all, never mind on selected night raids.

I mean really: Since when do terrorists ever fight fair?

Yes, the whole "the bad guys wouldn't win if the good guys had guns" line doesn't always work. The freedman were fairly well armed - they were just outnumbered in a culture where there were no normative bars to killing them in the middle of the night.

The Freedmen had guns, and it didn't work as the Klan had them too. Which fits the pattern, after all - the French had guns in 1940, after all. Even a few tanks!

If there's no one shooting at or blowing up state officials - police, magistrates, soldiers, etc. - or doing the same to state property, it's hard for me to say that fits any reasonable definition of "insurgency." Now, it fits "sectarian strife" or "civil strife" pretty well, as well as plenty of common law and statutory definitions of criminal violence.

And no question that it was very ugly, and we rightly criticize federal authorities for not doing more to stop it.* It would be worth examining, however, how much worse that violence was compared to other regions, and the 19th century generally, to better assess it in context. (I do not have those answers; I am just raising the question.)

Except there were a lot of dead judges and politicians and newspapers editors, and fair number of burned down courthouses.

Sorry, but unless you envisage the retention of a postwar US Army vastly larger than OTL (surely ASB whoever is in the White House) then I'm not clear what difference any policy changes can make except in the very short run. Once the principal means of enforcement shrinks back to peacetime size, the options dwindle to pretty much what the White South is willing to put up with. Obviously, if they restart the war by attempting another secession, that could change matters, but the likelihood of that is zilch when they know that time is on their side.

One of the threads that discussed the USA after some [suitably plausible CSA independence] had the thought that you don't necessarily need conscription: pay the army somewhat better and allow for shorter terms of enlistment. Whether this can be in the headspace of the 1865 USA is open to debate, but if you need a somewhat larger army that can meet manpower goals, this could be an option.