RECONSTRUCTION!!!

[johan_steele]

How much of the $100+ million was the value of lost property... ie slaves? I would suggest at leat half.

[ole]

Shane:

Perhaps more. IIRC, before the war, slaves were valued at somewhere near $400 million. Perhaps of near equal value was the loss of their labor, which led to the collapse of the plantation system which, in turn, resulted in the near-fatal spiral that is today blamed largely on Sherman.

The slave-owning aristocracy did indeed accurately predict their fate IF slavery were to be abolished. Their paranoia turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Had slavery been allowed to die on its own, as Lincoln anticipated, there would have been much more time to industrialize, adjust, finish railroads, and prepare for the end without the trauma inflicted by losing the rebellion.

Ole

[unionblue]

Shane,

What Sherman claimed and what amount in dollars of property was really destroyed is also the subject of some dispute.

From the book, Marching Through Georgia, by Lee Kennett; "Sherman's estimate of a hundred million dollars is similarly suspect, particularly since he was also quoted as saying the army destroyed a million dollars worth of property per mile, which would add up to three times the sum he put in his final report. If we mark out the lines of march of his four corps, assume all the country between the columns was swept over, and add an additional five miles to each side of this swath for the roamings of foragers and bummers, it appears the area devastated was about 12 percent of Georgia's territor, including some extremely rich areas but also some very uproductive ones. Yet Sherman's figure of one hundred million dollars represents a full third of Georgia's total wealth in 1860, exclusive of slaves.

The rest of Thea's recent post does give pause for some consideration, especially the lines concerning individual Confederate fighting techniques and the coming of industry in the North. But again, I think this reflects upon the idea that the South could not move forward into the modern age in a democratic fashion, not with an undemocratic institution dragging it down.

Unionblue

[thea_447]

I would like to step back a moment and add this as a preface to Hal (hawglips) comments of post #39 and #40:

As early as May 5, 1865, The Independent, which spoke for what came to be called the Radical Republicans in Congress, was asserting: "There is one, and only one, sure and safe policy for the immediate future, namely: the North must remain the absolute Dictator of the Republic until the spirit of the North shall become the spirit of the whole country...The South is still unpurged of her treason. Prostrate in the dust she is no less a traitor at this hour than when her head was erect....They cannot be trusted with authority over their former slaves: they cannot be trusted with authority over the re-cemented Republic...The only hope for the South is to give the ballot to the Negro and in denying it to the rebels."

In the same vindictive spirit, George W. Julian of Indiana would "indict, convict and hang Jefferson Davis, in the name of God; as for Robert E. Lee, unmolested in Virginia, hang him too. And stop there? Not at all. I would hang liberally while I had my hand in." Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio suggested that "if the negroes by insurrection could contrive to slay one-half of the Southern whites, the remaining half would then hold them in respect and treat them with justice." Thaddeus Stevens would wipe out Southern state lines and reduce the section to a territory where rebels would learn to practice justice to all men. Charles Sumner would seize all rebel property and distribute it to the Negroes, give them the vote, and let them rule the section.

Moderates such as James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin, James Dixon of Connecticut, and Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania backed Johnson's program even in the face of party pressure. William P. Fessenden of Maine, James W. Grimes of Iowa, and others asked only for cooperation and enough balance to keep their party in control and the nation on the right course.

(President Johnson in December, 1865, had announced: "I have....gradually and quietly and by almost imperceptible steps, sought to restore the rightful energy of the General Government and of the States. To that end, provisional governors have been appointed for the states, conventions called, governors elected, legislatures assembled, and senators and representatives chosen to the Congress of the United States." )

He suggested that Southern senators and representatives not apply until after Congress had organized. He then added that courts of the United States had been reopened so that the law of the United States could be enforced through their agency. Blockages had been removed, custom houses re-established, postal service restored, and the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery ratified by "each one of these states".

Great multitudes of people may have gladly seen the army disbanded and looked forward to a quick return to normal living, but there were persons in Congress and out who would not believe the war had come to an end until those who had caused it were adequately punished, the Negro set on the road to first-class citizenship, and the Republican party assured of perpetual dominance.

The path that the Republican party traveled from cooperation to an open break with the President is not clear. Most of them had realized that nothing would ever be the same again. But now words like "security", "Southern humility". "a change of heart", and "Southern repentence" were being bandied about. It wouldn't be until President Johnson took the initiative and the South responded, that the Republican party realized what they had, perhaps from the beginning, required of the South and what they in the end would take. That turned the quarrel into one between the Republican Congress and the President. It made the South and the President one--it perhaps even made the President and the Democratic party one.

[unionblue]

The following is posted from the PBS web site, RECONSTRUCTION, The Second Civil War.

Myth: The North subjected the South to military rule during Reconstruction.

David Blight: This is the great myth of Reconstruction...that it was an oppressive set of regimes sent into the South to invent the Republican party, using the black vote, running the legitimate leadership of the white South out of town and out of business, and putting Americans under a kind of oppressive rule by the federal government. Part of that whole story is also deeply rooted in this American tradition--which isn't just Southern--of localism, of faith in states' rights, that the federal government is an oppressor when it crosses state lines to create institutions, to expand liberties. And part of the myth of "Negro rule," or the tragic legend, is rooted in this states' rights reaction to the use of federal power. This has been at the heart of our debate about the nature and meaning of Reconstruction ever since. Was it truly a military occupation? You could argue, no, it really almost never was. The number of troops still left in the South by 1875 and '76 at the end, were tiny. And most of them were garrisoned in forts along the coast, never had anything to do with the enforcement or operation of the internal politics of Southern states. They guarded no state houses. They didn't even guard ballot boxes, which they should have, in most states by the middle of the 1870s. It is really wasn't a genuine military occupation after 1868, in any sense of the term we've come to understand military occupations in the 20th century.

Eric Foner: The idea that the South was under military rule and military occupation is really a myth. The Union army was demoblized very, very fast at the end of the Civil War. Some people thought, too fast, because there was so much chaos and violence in the South. By 1866, there are 10,000 12,000, maybe 15,000 soldiers left in the South. But most of themare in Texas, fighting the Indians. You could go for months and months in the South without ever seeing a federal soldier. There were small encampments of federal soldiers around. And if there were outbreaks of violence, they would sometimes be brought in to try to supress it. Sometimes the Freedmen's Bureau would call in a few soldiers to arrest a planter who refused to pay his workers or something like that. But no. Law and order was in the hands of governments, not of the army. And military rule was very, very brief. And the occupation was quite short-lived, really, in any practical sense.

Myth: Yankees and blacks conspired to exploit the South after the war.

David Blight: There's a deep and complicated legend...that Reconstruction was essentially a Yankee conquest, the occupation of the Southern states and the oppression of the Southern people; that they were put under so-called "Negro rule" or "carpetbag rule." And this is all based on the ideas that Southern state legislatures under the radical regimes, from 1868 on, were really ruled by blacks and by Northerners who came South. There was only one Southern state legislature that ever had a majority of blacks and carpetbaggers.

There were a few carpetbag governors--that is, Northerners who came South. The vast majority of carpetbaggers, Northerners who moved South, moved there early. They moved there right after the war. They moved there because the South was now the new pioneer society...It was a place of opportunity.

And we need to remember that there was a good deal of skullduggery and "get rich quick" motivation among some carpetbaggers. But since when is it not a great American tradition to go where the main chance is, to go where entrepreneurship is so welcome? The South dearly wanted Northern investment. It's one of the ironies of this. Early on, they wanted Northern investment. They wanted federal investment to help them rebuild their harbors and build some railroads and rebuild towns and cities, re-establish agricultural production. Most Northerners that went South and became carpetbaggers were already there in 1865 or '66, before the radical regimes are even created. So that idea that they all went there to exploit and establish radical Republican political organization is not exactly the case.

Myth: The black legislators elected during Reconstruction were all corrupt.

Ed Ayers: For generations, the dominant story about Reconstruction in the white South and...the eyes of the nation was that it was a time of Corruption, and that it was a time when ignorant former slaves stole the taxpayers' [money]...Was there some corruption during Reconstruction? Yes, there was. And were some of the former slaves and other black legislators involved? Yes, they were. Was it on an uprecedented or unparalleled scale at the time? No. Was it solely in the hands of Republicans and not the Democrats in the South at the time? No. Was it black property and not white property as well? No...

What we have is an economy that's trying to get back on its feet. And to get back on its feet, you've got to have especially railroads. The South had been building railroads...In the late 1850s, and it had relied on railroads throughout the Civil War. Everybody knows that the new economy of the second half of the 19th century is going to be based on the railroads. But how do you induce railroad companies to build in a war-ravaged, impoverished place? You give them incentives. You give them easy land, just like they are [getting] in the West at this time. When they want to give you a bribe to lower the tax rate, you might do that, partly because you'd like to have the bribe--times are hard--also because you want to see the railroad come to your county, come to your state.

There's what we might think of as the gospel of prosperity. Everybody says, "If we can be prosperous, if we can raise the standard of living, a lot of this conflict that we're having will go away. A rising tide will lift all of us, black and white, Republican and Democrat. So let' see if we can't put some...money into all this, get the economy going again."

Now, this wasn't new in the South. The South had spent a lot of money on economic development before the Civil War. They had tried building canals like the Erie Canal in New York. They had put a lot of money in building state-supported railroads...they were trying to do the same thing again. So this wasn't the invention of Reconstruction. But what happened in Reconstruction is that the economy just refused to get better. In fact, it got worse. And so these investments that the Southern governments were making in railroads did not pan out. And the governments found themselves holding worthless stock; found themselves in debt; found things that they wanted to spend money for, they were unable to--because they'd put all this money into railroads.

It's in this environment of the super-heated desperate economic development that corruption can flourish. And again, we're talking about a relatively few years. People are eager for the railroad lobbyists to come in and slap them on the back, say, "Here's some money to make sure that we're the ones who get to build a railroad into this rich area of the South." And these legislators, often who have no other source of income, who are living in these hard times, say, "Well, that doesn't contradict what I want to happen anyway. So go ahead and let me have it."

So this is one reason that you find that this is a general era of corruption in American government, because it is a time--as we've seen in our time--when the economy is growing very rapidly, and there are great gains to be made; that people sometimes cut corners in order to get their share of this rapidly emerging bonanza. So most of the corruption of the Reconstruction era is the result of this economic environment that happened to be happening at the same time as Reconstruction.

Unionblue

[thea_447]

Human losses at war's end were much more serious than worn out farm equipment and broken fences, or the loss of from a third to a fourth of ALL horses, mules and hogs.

Manpower was heavily depleted. Population was now around 5 million, of whom one million had been in the armies and many of these were crippled, maimed, more a burden than an asset; more than a quarter of a million had died, these young men would leave no descendents. In South Carolina of the 44,046 able-bodied arms bearing men, 44,000 had volunteered. In all some 71,000 men had seen service; of these nearly 13,000 (23 percent) had been killed. Of Alabama's 126,587 white men between 15 and 20, over 122,000 had been in the army and over 35,000 were lost.

Never before in modern times had any people suffered such proportionately high casualties. The section had been bled white.

For the South's 258,000 dead at least 100,000 must be added as wounded, with an additional 60,000 taken prisoners. This already bankrupt people were forced to spend as much as a fifth of their total revenue to buy artificial legs and arms and even more for the support of widows and orphans. It is hard to contemplate such human wreckage.

"It is, therefore a false impression to assume that the South of 1865 was much concerned with politics" or that it was interested in anything of reconstruction" wrote Paul H. Buck.

"The North itself was so preoccupied with the issue of deciding a Reconstruction policy that everything Southern was distorted. Purveyors of Southern news to the North were curious as to what the South thought, especially about the negro and the political situation. They pried into the minds that would never otherwise have expressed opinions, and opinions were relayed North to be printed in newspapers, reports, and books." (Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion (Boston, 1937), pp. 36-37)

[thea_447]

I hope you can see this article. It is very long but worth the read. Sometimes it is hard to bring it up, but keep trying. Eventually you will get through.
http://www.blackmask.com/books11c/sequelap.htm

I'D SAY THE DISPUTE ON THE LATTER IS ONLY MUTED, NOT
SETTLED, BUT A GOOD READ NONETHELESS...]
_The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion
of the States_
Walter Lynwood Fleming
CHAPTER I. THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
When the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy
were disbanded in 1865, two matters had been settled
beyond further dispute: the Negro was to be free, and
the Union was to be perpetuated. But, though slavery
and State sovereignty were no longer at issue, there
were still many problems which pressed for solution.
The huge task of reconstruction must be faced. The
nature of the situation required that the measures of
reconstruction be first formulated in Washington by
the victors and then worked out in the conquered
South. Since the success of these policies would
depend in a large measure upon their acceptability to
both sections of the country, it was expected that the
North would be influenced to some extent by the
attitude of the Southern people, which in turn would
be determined largely by local conditions in the
South. The situation in the South at the close of the
SECESSION War is, therefore, the point at which this
narrative of the reconstruction naturally takes its
beginning.
http://www.blackmask.com/books11c/sequelap.htm

[FSPowers]

I posted this on another thread, however it seems fitting here:

I just finished E.P Alexander's Military Memoirs of a Confederate (don't worry, this is not a review) and he recalled an coversation with E.B. Washburne following the ANV surrender where the question was asked:

"The question will not be what are we going to do, Mr. Washburne, but what is Mr. Lincoln going to do?" "Well, gentlemen," said he, "let me tell you something. When the news came that Richmond had fallen, and that Grant's army was in a position to intercept Lee's retreat, I went up to the White House to congratulate Mr. Lincoln, and I had the opportunity to have a talk with him on this very topic. Of course, it would not be proper for me to violate Mr. Lincoln's confidence by disclosing any details of his plans for restoring the Union, but I am going to make you a prophecy."
"His plan will not only astonish the South, but it will astonish Europe and foreign nations as well. And I will make you a prediction. Within a year Mr. Lincoln will be as popular with you of the South as he is now with the North."

Alexander thought is was a 19th Century version of an aid package.

The question this raises is; would Reconstruction have been easier if President Lincoln had lived long enough to complete his second term?

[ole]

Thea posted a link to a rather lengthy study that is well worth downloading and reading at greater leisure. It is 140 html pages. I convert to Word or Word Perfect, reduce the type size and extend the margins. It is now, at page 25, 97 pages long.

It is a worthwhile read. So far, the author has managed to clear up a lot of misconceptions about the Reconstruction era. He has shown that the Federal plans were relatively well-intentioned, but that (as we all know) they frequently devolve into unintended results.

There are surprises, too. Lincoln had started reconstruction plans in occupied states as early as 1863. These states suffered little in comparison to those that held out until the war's end.

Recommended.
Ole

[thea_447]

http://www.blackmask.com/books11c/sequelap.htm
Excerpts from: The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States Walter Lynwood Fleming





CHAPTER I. THE AFTERMATH OF WAR


The desolation is thus described by a Virginia farmer:
"From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles . . . the country was almost a desert . . . . We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or horse or anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards were very much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The barns were all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses standing without roof, or door, or window."

Five years after the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the Tennessee Valley:



"It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi- ruin and plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete . . . . The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories . . . and in large tracts of once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads, long neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods and fields without much respect to boundaries." Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not in the country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond, Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from fire or bombardment.

Had there been unrestricted commercial freedom in the South in 1865-66, the distress of the people would have been somewhat lessened, for here and there were to be found public and private stores of cotton, tobacco, rice, and other farm products, all of which were bringing high prices in the market. But for several months the operation of wartime laws and regulations hindered the distribution of even these scanty stores. Property upon which the Confederate Government had a claim was, of course, subject to Confiscation, and private property offered for sale, even that of Unionists, was subject to a 25 percent tax on sales, a shipping tax, and a revenue tax. The revenue tax on cotton, ranging from two to three cents a pound during the three years after the war, brought in over $68,000,000. This tax, with other Federal revenues, yielded much more than the entire expenses of reconstruction from 1865 to 1868 and of all relief measures for the South, both public and private. After May 1865, the 25 percent tax was imposed only upon the produce of slave labor. None of the war taxes, except that on cotton, was levied upon the crops of 1866, but while these taxes lasted, they seriously impeded the resumption of trade.

A Freedmen's Bureau official traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a description which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third of the South: "It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, that of women and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger to many of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little crops they hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish. By far the greater suffering exists among the whites. Their scanty supplies have been exhausted, and now they look to the Government alone for support. Some are without homes of any description."

It was estimated, in December 1865, that in the states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were five hundred thousand white people who were without the necessaries of life; numbers died from lack of food.

Whitelaw Reid relates the following incident:

"Nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than the almost painful effort of the rebels, from generals down to privates, to conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received. There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a pair of tailor's shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the uniform of an elegant gray-headed old brigadier, who had just come in from Johnston's army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows, evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely mortified at such treatment. They had no clothes except their rebel uniforms, and had, as yet, had no time to procure others, but they avoided disturbances and submitted to what they might, with some propriety, and with the general approval of our officers, *have resented."

________________________________________________

________________________________________________

By December of 1865 all the Southern states, except Texas had fulfilled Johnson's requirements for "re-entry" into the Union (which of course Lincoln had stated they "never left"....Go figure...) Texas did meet the requirements and April, 1866 all of the Southern states elected members to Congress.

The ring leaders of the Radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stevens, in the House of Representatives, and Charles Sumner, in the Senate. Stevens was extremely caustic, and a perfect ally for Sumner who was dogmatic, uncompromising and held a special hatred for Southerners, an attitude made even more vicious because of an incident in 1856 in the Senate. During a Senate speech he launched a personal attack upon Southerners, more specifically upong the aged Senator Butler of South Carolina, that two days later, Senator Butler's nephew, Preston Brooks, also a Congressman, caught Sumner alone in the Senate chamber and avenged his uncle by beating Sumner mercilessly with his cane.

The consuming hatred of these twin Republicans, Stevens and Sumner, was a precursor of radical Reconstruction and those that followed their lead soon became known as the Black Republicans. As early as 1865, Stevens left no doubt as to his plans for the South in a speech delivered before the House of Representatives:

"The whole fabric of southern society must be changed and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this Government can never be, as it has never been, a true republic. Heretofore, it had more the features of aristocracy than of democracy. The Southern States have been despotisms, not governments of the people. It is impossible that any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the whole landed property. The larger the number of small proprietors the more safe and stable the government. If the South is ever to be made a safe republic let her lands be cultivated by the toil of the owners or the free labor of intelligent citizens. This must be done though it drive her nobility into exile. If they go, all the better. (Current, Friedel, and Williams, A History of the United States Since 1865, p.10)

But first thing they needed to do was to deny Southerners their seats in Congress by simply not calling them into chambers and allowing them to be seated, thus giving Republicans time to bolster their strength in the fall elections of 1866. Then they created a "Southern Representation" , a congressional committee to investigate and report on everything the Southerners did and said. (They'd already created the Freedman's Bureau in 1865 to aid Negroes in the South.) The 1866 Congress gave it new powers, including authority to hold military trials for people suspected of denying rights to Negroes, as well as the authority to intervene in any dispute concerning labor contracts between white land owners and the Negroes hired by them.