“All men are created equal, says the great Declaration, and now a great act attests to this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality.” Charlese Sumner, 1870; at the inauguration of the first Black Senator, Hiram Revels of Mississippi.
“They came at night, in disguise, and dragged me from my house…they whipped me because I had voted Republican and taught school to colored children.” Eyewitness account, Congressional KKK Hearings, 1871
“The whole public are tired out of these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South…and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the government.” President Ulysses S. Grant, 1875
“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world…and then we fucked up the endgame.” Charlie Wilson’s War, 2007
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The Lie
The culture of the pre-war South was built on the myth of White Supremacy.
Whites, being superior to all other races, were said to be granted the responsibility to care for lesser beings, including their black slaves. For this honor, those slaves would handle the menial labor so that Whites could focus on a life of culture, knowledge, and self-improvement.
Those slaves, due to their lesser condition, were completely satisfied with their lot in life. Always happy to serve and unquestionably loyal to their Masters and Southern society.
What, then, needed to be reconstructed in the post-war South other than that which had literally been deconstructed during the war? The society had been perfect and idyllic, a mirror of the world a benevolent God intended.
That is the lie – there was nothing wrong with slavery and the pre-war South, therefore there is no need to rebuild the institutions. If White Supremacy is correct, then the continued dominance of newly freed Blacks is not just inevitable – it’s natural. Lesser beings don’t need a voice in government, their concerns will still be governed by their former Masters, as nature intended.
All that is truly needed for a successful Reconstruction is to rebuild broken things and then let the South manage herself.
The Truth
That is all a crock of shit.
The South wasn’t noble. Slavery isn’t humane. Reconstruction failed because pride, resentment, and White Supremacy rotted the core of the South until there was nothing left to rebuild upon.
Reconstruction failed because former Confederates were allowed to shape its aftermath, and ultimately, did what the Confederacy couldn’t – outlast the political will of the rest of America.
And they succeeded. Their poison is still in our system today, choking the very life and liberty so freely promised by the words in the Declaration of Independence.
Let’s start with the easy one first – Slavery isn’t noble or humane. If slavery was humane, and those subjected to it were content, then why were there more than 250 documented slave revolts in America?
In the antebellum South, ‘slave patrols’ were organized groups of armed men responsible for maintaining order and discipline among the enslaved population. Why do loyal subjects require an armed force to ensure their acquiescence?
If the enslaved had no desire to be free and rule their own lives, then why was a Fugitive Slave Act, requiring the return of any person who escaped their enslaver, part of the federal law from 1850-1864? Why did the black population in Canada increase by 20,000 between 1850 and 1860? Why did entire escaped slave communities spring up where Quakers or other abolitionists were?
The Truth is, the South was already an anachronism when it existed. The South was run by Planters, large land and slave owners who primarily made their money by the sale of cash crops and humans – this was a small and elite class. The reliance on forced labor and focus on cash crops meant that Industrialization in the South was far behind the rest of the county. Due to fewer opportunities, most Southerners were subsistence farmers or laborers – they didn’t own slaves and mostly eked out a survival.
The new opportunities for upward mobility and self-improvement that were occurring in the North were not happening in the South.
The Truth is that the economy, culture, and mythos of the antebellum South was built on slave labor. At the outbreak of the Civil War, it’s estimated that the total value of all enslaved people was over 3 billion dollars. The sale of enslaved people is estimated to have generated 7 to 8 million dollars a year in Virginia before the start of the war.
The Truth is – the war was about slavery, and Reconstruction failed because the South refused to adapt…
Why It Matters
It helps to learn history in context, so let’s break Reconstruction down into three stages:
- “This Could Work” (1865-1870)
- “Uh-Oh” (1871-1874)
- “It All Goes to Shit” (1875-present)
From 1865-1870, the nation struggled. We had just been through a destructive war, the man we expected to lead us through the post-war reality was assassinated, and a man with odd allegiances, Andrew Johnson, ascended to the Presidency. The nation struggled with what it had been, what it wanted to be, and how to get there.
The period of Reconstruction I call “This Could Work” wasn’t utopian. There was still mass racial violence in cities in the South, newly freed Blacks were subject to discrimination, forced to sign labor contracts, or barred from all work except low-paid manual labor. The right to vote for the Black man had not been secured, and this was generally a time of uncertainty.
In the midst of all that, though, citizenship was granted to all male persons, regardless of race or color, or previous condition of slavery. The 14th amendment was passed that secures naturalized citizenship and increases the federal government’s authority to protect Americans’ rights.
President Andrew Johnson was a Southern War Democrat who hated the Planter class, but still believed in White Supremacy and a South run by White men. His policies were lenient towards the former Confederacy, making him hated by the Republicans. In 1866, Americans agreed with Republicans, who wanted stricter requirements for readmittance to the Union, and elected enough Republicans to Congress to override Johnson’s policies.
In 1867, Radical Congressional Reconstruction starts, and Southern states are required to draft new constitutions that protect the right to vote for the Black man and require adoption of the 14th amendment.
Schools, the precursor to our modern public school system, were constructed all over the South to provide education to the newly-free. Over 1,500 Blacks were elected to office by 1870. It wasn’t perfect, there was still violence and upheaval, but there was positive change and momentum.
In 1871, the start of the “Uh-Oh” period, things started to change. The last of the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union – and all but about 500 former Confederates were eligible to hold office. A new evil has arisen, the Ku Klux Klan, that was stoking racial violence and intimidating those working for change. Blacks in office in the South are accused of corruption or being in cahoots with the federal swindlers.
In the rest of the country, the Age of the Robber Baron is unfolding and there is rampant corruption in government and finance. Eventually corruption crashed the economy in 1873 and the rest of the country loses the will to deal with a still rebellious South.
By 1875, It All Goes to Shit. There are some attempts at legislation to force compliance in a rebellious South, but without the will to enforce it, the new laws are ignored. In 1877, to ensure they won the Presidency, Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction. Reconstruction end, segregation is codified, and civil rights are basically ignored until the late 1940’s.
***
The Civil War wouldn’t be the last time America fucked up the endgame. WW2, Vietnam, both Afghanistan adventures, healthcare are just some in the long list. Losing focus is a consequence of a free and Democratic society. In most cases, it’s too late to go back and try to get it right.
Reconstruction isn’t one of those cases.
Reconstruction was murdered because we abetted liars and traitors. We allowed the worst among us to retain their hold in society and that poison has trickled through the ages.
Due to our belief that an idiot should be allowed to say whatever he wants, we are loathe to go the German route and prohibit certain types of speech.
That means it’s on us, as a society, as participants in our creaky-but-still-functional Democracy, to call out the poison when we hear it.
***
In May of 2020, most of us were stuck at home. Most businesses were closed due to COVID restrictions, a lot of us were working remote, and we, while terrified, all had a break from the grind and hustle of a Capitalist society.
So, when a police officer murdered a Black man named George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis, most of us couldn’t believe what we’d seen. We were shocked and outraged. In the immediate aftermath, most Americans, according to polling, agreed that policing in this country was racist. Most Americans felt that the protests were justified, even though they’d prefer there was no violence.
NASCAR banned Confederate flags from their events. Communities began talking about options for policing to try to circumvent the racism inherent in the system. For a while, at least, it seemed like we understood how short we were of true equality.
Just like the post-war momentum, we got distracted. Distracted by COVID, and fear, and our lives. New liars brought out the same lies – it’s not the police, it’s those people. The system isn’t rigged, those people are criminals. There’s no point in helping those people, they’ll just waste any opportunity.
We, again, let them get away with it because we were tired, distracted, beaten down.
***
If we don’t take our history back, it will keep being used against us. The lie is still told on the news, it’s written into laws, it’s hung on flagpoles and porches. And we let them keep lying.
We have to name it. The Civil War was fought over slavery. The Confederacy existed to preserve the institution of slavery. The men in gray fought to preserve slavery; the men in blue to end it. Slavery was brutal, horrible, and evil. Slavery, and its less oppressive descendants, have destroyed the fabric of Black culture, society, and family.
And that is still in our system, continuing to do its damage.
I know we’re all tired. We’ve been fighting this fight for generations – and every time we make the slightest progress, the bad guys lie louder, dig deeper, and distract too many of us with some other shiny problem.
But the truth still matters…it has to matter. If we want a future that looks like the original American Promise, we have to take our history back. We have to speak freely, fiercely, with conviction – and refuse to let the lie go unanswered. We have to take back the truth in our schools, politics, and daily lives.
If we don’t tell the truth about the past, they’ll keep telling their version – and using it to justify everything that happens next.
SO WHAT ABOUT HISTORY? 
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