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Editor says, what if the victorious South meddled in the Reconstruction of the defeated North? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the September 2011 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1866, with the US Congress in Philadelphia deeply divided between Free Soil Republicans and Southern sympathizing Tory Democrats the debate over the Reconstruction Programme in the North entered a new phase with the reports of armed clashes in New Mexico between drifting Confederate and settled black Union Veterans.
Bloody New Mexico
By Ed, Armand A. Ruhlman, Jeff Provine and Scott PalterA huge northward exodus of African Americans had begun almost immediately after the signature of the "Two Americas" peace settlement that followed the Southern occuptation of Washington City.
But in the event many parts of the rural and small city North simply banned Freedmen or chased out newcomers. Because the dreadful truth was that much of the North had objected to slavery because they objected to white men having to compete with black labor.
Increased African American representation added a new dimension to the 1866 Congressional elections and the result was a deeply divided governing class that could only seem to agree on the need to prevent the "Second Birth of the Nation" ending in tragedy.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Robert E. Lee, American Civil War, Confederate States of America, Confederacy, Virginia. Editor says, in this post we explore an idea raised by Facebook User Armand A. Ruhlman: fascinating question re: the south winning the war - the loosing north probably would have done something similar to what the loosing south did - the loosing side would have waged resistance in whatever way possible - both visible and secretive - both legal and illegal - political, social, cultural, etc. - in fact, the south is still waging war against the north - just look at the rightward drift of the country toward a military-dictatorship styled corporate oligarchy that basically calls the tunes - Peace -
~ This one is just silly, the whole purpose of reconstruction was to reintegrate the Confederate states into the whole of the United states. If the Confederacy had won independence then there wouldn't be anything for them to Reconstruct, there would have been two separate countries.
~ I must disagree. In this timeline, a shrunken USA would have had to adjust to the loss of roughly a third of its territory, including access to the mouth of the Mississipi, and fend off potential additional secessions in the wake of its defeat. Quite likely there would have been a huge postwar economic crash (there was a majoor depression in the 1870s anyway, following the stock-market and banking "panic" of 1873). "Reconstruction" in this TL would have had a different meaning, that's all.
~ Presume the US lets Dixie go. One the basics of the war was an asymetry of interest - secession mattered more to more Southerners than Union did to most Unionists. This always partially cancelled out the disparity in power. So somewhere between 1862-64 the Union loses the will to continue the war. That leaves millions of contraband blacks and Dixie Tory whites on the wrong side of the eventual border. So as the blue armies come north these people must be moved to somewhere that stays in the Union, resettled etc. Hence Reconstruction.
~ OK, perhaps we can talk about the postwar policy of the winning side. Unfortunately, the TERM "reconstruction" cannot possibly be applied to a Confederate victory. The term was used from early 1861 (often forgotten) to speak of the RESTORING of relations of states within the Union. So by definition, this term cannot be used.// But what's especially confusing about this entry is the failure to lay out what actually happened to SLAVERY in the South (and new territories). There is mention of freedmen, esp. of blacks in the Union army, but how does that all fit in on this scenario?
~ Actually, a more serious objection is to the editorial note's silly (and frankly offensive) slap against conservatives as pushing toward "a military-dictatorship" blah blah blah. Let's try to leave our own current Left/Right politics (and esp caricatures of 'the other side') out of this. In any case, Southern resistance to Reconstruction (leading to the VERY much misnamed 'redemption' of these states) is hardly the same thing as current Southern political trends, and the attempt to tar the latter (glad at least you didn't add "racist") as of a piece with the hateful, murderous anti-Reconstruction efforts of past generations is unwarranted and certainly unhelpful.
~ The sad truth is that the Klan was strongest in places like Iowa and Indiana. West would be the only hope for Freedmen if negative feelings of a lost war were coupled with the racism of the time. Might give credence to Malcolm X's separatist ideals a century later (provided he's not butterflied out).
~ Klan strength in Indiana and Iowa not until 1920s.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
