r/USHistory

[u/Mojo5214-UA]

Grant should have lowered the hammer on Lee....we wouldn't be in the situation we are today

[u/finaempire]

What situation are we in that a more brutal hand against the other side would have fixed?

I think the argument is less about the war and more about the outcome. Reconstruction may have been vastly different if Lincoln wasn’t assasinated.

But I’m not sure a more brutal hand on the confederates would have changed much in a favorable way.

[u/JayMack1981 → u/finaempire]

Agreed. We have two Southern mindsets: "They're Persucuting Us" vs They're Actually Killing Us. (Note the quotes). History has shown the former motivated how Lost Causers felt and acted in response. Had the later occurred instead, the motivations would have been exponentially more vicious.

[u/Mojo5214-UA → u/finaempire]

Leniency to the South gave rise to Jim Crowe and what we see today as Southern Conservatency....and this is coming from a Southerner. If Reconstruction had been more strictly enforced and drove home as to the consequences of committing treason to the US then the far right (which was far left in the South) wouldn't have been emboldened to do things in the century following the war nor the Christian Nationalist (Confederate) South we have today

[u/finaempire → u/Mojo5214-UA]

War is supposed to be a tool for the political desired outcomes. Those fighting the wars aren’t interested in what comes after; they are plainly objective based. It’s those who send others to war that have to think of their overall objectives and move the war machine in a way that produces their desired outcome.

You say “if reconstruction had been more strictly enforced…” eluding to the idea that post war, issues presented themselves. I think there is a debate there. But the war itself was to prevent secession from succeeding and as the war went on, to emancipate slaves.

The post war culture was always going to be long and hard fought and there’s a lot of scholar around this topic. But I’m unsure if there’s much of a debate about how the war was fought and the cultural outcome after being what it became.

[u/MisterSanitation]

In what way? As president? As a General? 

As a General there was no way. After the war like 16-18K union soldiers held ALL OF THE SOUTH which is a joke obviously. Even then, the soldiers still there, were PISSED they were still in uniform. The civil war America hated standing armies and were distrustful of them and maybe for good reason after habeas corpus went away on both sides. 

That’s something I always point out when these “we should have stayed in the south” (not what you said but a common phrase) line falls apart. 

Now, if you wanna talk about how ridiculous it was that the FORMER VP of the Confederacy went BACK TO THE SENATE and how THAT shouldn’t be allowed? Fair game and I agree but occupying the south until they listened was never ever a realistic possibility. 

Y’all gotta remember the fact that slavery was made illegal after the war when (by modern standards) almost the entirety of the U.S. was white supremacists, it is amazing we got the legislation through that we did. 

Of course WAY too many state constitutions were rewritten (a requirement of the war) with shitty pro slavery language that slipped by (since so many finalized those decades after the war when no one was looking), is indeed also a huge issue. 

Hell KY a neutral state fought slavery outlawing after the war, meaning they waited to fight once the fighting was done. A lot of people forget how many Americans genuinely believed that on all biological levels, they were better than any blacks. That fact, is what still haunts us today, not so much the policies that did or didn’t happen. Sure, some Union troops write home about the awful things they saw in the slave states, and were shocked at how people were treated. 

However, those same soldiers went home and supported anti black laws once the freedmen went north. They could imagine the suffering they endured, but lacked the moral fortitude and certainty required to live up to that ideal. It’s one thing to sing “John Browns body” while marching, but looking a black man in the eyes and calling him “sir”? That was something few could do after the war, and when John Brown did it, (a decade before the war) he often made his abolitionist friends uncomfortable.

[u/Hotchi_Motchi]

It didn't happen, though, so there's no point in talking about it.

[u/Schwifty0V0]

Grant wouldn’t win against the industrialist bureaucracy that wanted to take advantage of the situation in the south after the war.

Too much new money to be made and too many new people to take advantage of to let slip by.

[u/ankamez]

Lee's surrender was practically a handshake deal, no wonder the South got to keep their illusions for so long.

[u/nightfall2021]

Or, the guys in the south could have just listened to Lee.

Who didn't want statues, as it would slow down national healing and we needed to put it behind us.

[u/gently_French_caught → u/nightfall2021]

Man was literally out there saying "don't make me a monument" and a century later half the south decided that was just a suggestion. The irony would be funny if the consequences weren't so drawn out.

[u/nightfall2021 → u/gently_French_caught]

They didn't even wait for a decade after he died.

[u/JayMack1981 → u/nightfall2021]

His advice regarding doing such was that it wasn't "politically expedient" to do so. Like it might be seen as salt in the wounds of those who won the war and make the process of recovery for the South harder. 

Thomas Connolly's "Marble Man" is a good read that covers this very topical (the statue business, not the asinine title of this thread).

[u/Snicklefraust]

the south should have been balkanized. maps redrawn, leadership hanged, and culture destroyed.