Reconstruction?

[cw1865]

I think that we should open up a new home page thread on Reconstruction and the events after the Civil War.

[DJ Psychomike]

This looks like a good title for at least a thread!

[ole]

Open one. Any member can open a thread at any time on any forum. Go for it. Open a forum. on the top left there is a button called "New Thread." Select that, fill in the blanks, and there is a new thread.

ole

[DJ Psychomike]

Howdy folks I'm back after a brutal move into a 1700 square foot new pad, set up one room as a 1980's disco, set up the sundeck for barbq and sunning, now busy putting computers in all the rooms but the bathroom and kitchen! Hooked up the stereo, computer and DVD to a nightclub sound system (I pity the neighbors!) now I just have 40 boxes of books to set up in a library in the attic.
As many of you know by now, my approach to the Civil War is fluid. While others may strive to identify correct buttons on jackets in modern films made about the war, I am interested in the effect Lincoln has had to this day. This approach has gotten me into trouble as its pretty easy to bait me into explaining what I mean, then attacking me for explaining. (One particular person calls me a liar quite frequently around here and even when others chime in that I'm not, if I respond by explaining and not just name calling guess who gets in trouble? If I say there are no good wars and people list wars they think are just, and I respond, guess who is blamed for "hijacking threads"? So is the questioner to blame, or the person that answers?).
Hey, it's not my house, so from now on such questions should probably be posted to me with a special message so as not to appear here and cause palpitations.
Let's begin this look at Reconstruction with the murder of Lincoln. When did Lincoln go from being the most hated man in America ( in the North and South ), to his present state of being thought of as Jesus? These excerpts from the New York Times (the entire article at the link is well worth a read ) I think cover this touchy subject- and why it was done.
WHEN LINCOLN BECAME JESUS
THIS year, Good Friday, the day commemorating Christ's crucifixion, falls on April 14, as it did in 1865. On that evening, in the balcony box of Ford's Theater in Washington, John Wilkes Booth fired a handmade .41-caliber derringer ball into the back of Abraham Lincoln's head.
In the days that followed Lincoln's death, his mourning compatriots rushed to compare him to Jesus, Moses and George Washington.
Despite the Good Friday coincidence, the Jesus parallel was not an obvious one for 19th-century Americans to make. The Protestant population, then as now, included a vigilant evangelical minority who thought that Jesus, sinless on earth, was defamed every time ordinary sinners presumed to imitate him. No mere mortal could be put beside Jesus on a moral balance scale.
But Honest Abe overwhelmed the usual evangelical reticence — by April 1865 the majority of Northerners and Southern blacks took him as no ordinary person. He had been offering his body and soul all through the war and his final sacrifice, providentially appointed for Good Friday, showed that God had surely marked him for sacred service.
At a mass assembly in Manhattan five hours after Lincoln's death, James A. Garfield — the Ohio congressman who would become the second assassinated president 16 years later — voiced the common hesitancy, then went on to claim the analogy: "It may be almost impious to say it, but it does seem that Lincoln's death parallels that of the Son of God."
Jesus had saved humanity, or at least some portion of it, from eternal ****ation. Lincoln had saved the nation from the civic equivalent of ****ation: the dissolution that had always bedeviled republics. "Jesus Christ died for the world," said the Rev. C. B. Crane in Hartford. "Abraham Lincoln died for his country."
The small minority of Jews and Catholics, equally awed by Lincoln's bodily sacrifice, joined Protestants in hailing the president's uncommon virtues: forgiveness, mercy, defense of the poor and the oppressed. Catholics joined Protestants in noting his Christ-like habits of brooding in private and keeping his own counsel.
Nearly everyone joined in heralding Lincoln's phrase "with malice toward none, with charity for all," which Christian mourners hailed as the heart of the Gospel. Those words from his second inaugural address, delivered just six weeks before his death, turned up on hand-scrawled banners all over the Union. People mounted them, along with black-bordered flags and photographs of Lincoln, in the windows of their homes and shops.
Thomas Nast's 1866 painting "President Lincoln Entering Richmond" (commemorating his surprise stroll into the capital of the Confederacy on April 4, 1865, shortly after Robert E. Lee's retreat) reinforced the sentiment: Lincoln shepherded his people just as Jesus did. The president walked into Richmond before Holy Week the way Jesus rode into Jerusalem before Passover: humbly, not triumphantly. Both men were enveloped by exuberant admirers.
Most American Christians turned to the Jesus analogy because they realized how much they loved Lincoln. They took his loss as personal, often comparing it to a death in the family. Many felt attached to Lincoln almost as they felt attached to Jesus. The striving rail-splitter from Illinois and the simple carpenter from Nazareth resembled them, the people. In contrast, while still heroic, Washington seemed more distant, even aloof.
Yet calculation as well as veneration entered the campaign to sanctify Lincoln. Radical Republicans revealed a political reason for comparing Lincoln to Jesus. Trying to explain why a rational Providence had permitted Lincoln to die, they decided that the savior of the nation had proved himself too Christ-like, too softhearted, too "womanly," for the necessarily punitive job of "reconstructing" the postwar South. God in his wisdom had put Andrew Johnson in place for the messy task of enacting justice.
Many Protestants also displayed a religious motive for emphasizing the resemblance between Lincoln and Christ. They made the president a virtual holy man because they wished retroactively to make him a morally impeccable and believing Christian. They considered theater-going, a favorite pastime of the president, as morally dubious; his choice of the stage for recreation on this day of crucifixion made them sick at heart.
And Lincoln, who after 1862 had spoken repeatedly of his dependence on God and Providence, had never referred much to Jesus. The barrage of Jesus comparisons offered a camouflaging aura of piety for a man who had enjoyed lowbrow, off-color humor as much as play-acting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/opinion/14fox.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[ole]

I don't see where this has anything to do with reconstruction -- more an unfriendly editorial exploration of the process involved in making a fallen leader into a hero.

But, this thread might well lead into an interesting discussion of reconstruction -- if we can avoid blaming Lincoln for all of today's faux governmental inadequacies.

But I'll open with the observation that I know very little about Reconstruction. I've been involved in the antebellum movement toward secession and war; and in the war itself. So I'd welcome a lesson or two on the subject itself. And with a question:

It has been said that Reconstruction did more to harden the hearts of southerners against northerners than did the war itself. Anything to that?

ole

[ole]

Some sort of glitch here. Was going to move this thread out of the Ballot Box to Civil War-related discussions but: along with so many old threads being credited with "new post" status, the mod tools have disappeared. Keep posting here until the glitch gets ironed out.

ole

[bankerpapaw]

Originally Posted by ole

I don't see where this has anything to do with reconstruction -- more an unfriendly editorial exploration of the process involved in making a fallen leader into a hero.

But, this thread might well lead into an interesting discussion of reconstruction -- if we can avoid blaming Lincoln for all of today's faux governmental inadequacies.

But I'll open with the observation that I know very little about Reconstruction. I've been involved in the antebellum movement toward secession and war; and in the war itself. So I'd welcome a lesson or two on the subject itself. And with a question:

It has been said that Reconstruction did more to harden the hearts of southerners against northerners than did the war itself. Anything to that?

ole

I had mentioned this in an earlier discussion on reconstruction. Personally, I believe there was more
hatred toward the North after the war because of "some" out-for-revenge/punishment polititians. Look at the instances during the war where Billy Yank and Johnny Reb exchanged "stuff." And where a Yankee would offer a Reb some water after he was wounded or vice-versa. The North had the advantage of the South and regretfully, some deeply abused that advantage.

[DJ Psychomike]

Johnson's version of reconstruction was simply to control blacks, put whites in charge and have the region go Democrat. Abolishinists of the day condemned him for reversing and stopping Lincoln's "gains". It really was Grant who tried to integrate the Blacks into society in the South, but because his rules were only for Blacks in the South and not the North, everyone got mad at him.

The reason there was animosty against the North however can be explained simply enough. If someone burned down your farm, raped your wife, took the food and supplies so your family starved, you would probably hold a grudge.

The question all governments fear, will the action taken have the desired effect?, can only be answered "no" in the case of the Civil War , unless one can explain why "apartheid", "indentured servitude" was better than slavery.

Lincoln has been well covered by his cult, as in "covered up". Modern conservatives say our economy is based on inflation and we print IOU's and not money- but they forget Lincoln started the Central bank. Liberals despise the "robber barons" and "railroad bosses", yet the railroads were Lincoln's biggest supporters, he gave them the country to create the transcontinental railroad and backed them kicking people off their land. Honest Abe indeed.

Russia had a Lincoln and Lenin Day beginning in Stalin's time that lasted until the early 80's. I once read an International Publications (CPUSA) book of speeches- praising Lincoln jailing critics, correctly pointing out that what they were condemned for by America we had done with our "greatest President".

Last week the White House said it could hold people without charges as long as they wanted to because "Lincoln did".

It would be a lot easier to not bring up the present if his supporters didn't keep raising his name.

Ole, tell Bush to stop!

By the way, didn't Lincoln pull a delegate rule that restricted 1/2 of the delegates from the other side to be seated at the convention? So he got the nomination?

Ya think Hillary doesn't know that!?!

I'll try, but tell the world to cut it out!

[Freddy]

Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike

Lincoln has been well covered by his cult, as in "covered up". Modern conservatives say our economy is based on inflation and we print IOU's and not money- but they forget Lincoln started the Central bank. Liberals despise the "robber barons" and "railroad bosses", yet the railroads were Lincoln's biggest supporters, he gave them the country to create the transcontinental railroad and backed them kicking people off their land. Honest Abe indeed.

So Lincoln and the Republicans created a central bank which helped them defeat the Confederacy. Sounds like good fiscal and military policy. Lincoln and the Republicans supported the Transcontinental Railroad. Sounds like good fiscal and transportation policy.

Too bad the South had not built the type of railroad system the North had built. It could have helped them during the war. But that would have run counter to the South's disdain for internal improvements. Lincoln and the Republicans were forward thinking, while the South's leaders were stuck fighting for the past, a society built on the backs of 4 million slaves.

[larry_cockerham]

Freddy wrote:

"Too bad the South had not built the type of railroad system the North had built. It could have helped them during the war. But that would have run counter to the South's disdain for internal improvements. Lincoln and the Republicans were forward thinking, while the South's leaders were stuck fighting for the past, a society built on the backs of 4 million slaves."

This sounds very much like it was written north of the Mason-Dixon line. The South, namely those who had invested in railroads, had built a considerable rail network. It just wasn't finished. River transport down the Mississippi, Tombigbee, Santee, Chattahoochie and other streams was still quite economical, though a bit slow. Even the Cumberland and Tennessee carried some commerce. It wasn't 'disdain'; but rather slow demand. The southern population was and is still widely distributed. To say 'fighting for the past' is probably not very accurate. There were some white backs working alongside or independently of the black ones. The other catch was the simple fact, that even with a full component of railroads, there wasn't much to load on the cars, except for gunpowder. Guns and bullets were the problem, along with blankets and medical supplies. A war that started both before and after it's time.