MAGA burns down house with children inside.
After the civil war, the KKK used violence against elected officials and voters who didn’t do what they wanted.
People backed down, and that’s why a bunch of racists control the south.
Backing down doesn’t work. It just makes it worse later.
I would put more blame on Andrew Johnson. He completely screwed reconstruction from the start.
Restructionism worked…
Can’t remember if it was Alabama or Georgia, but the first Black man to vote was shot in the back leaving the polling booth, and they still got a lot of Black politicians elected.
But the KKK threatened every Black politician, every Black voter, and every White person who spoke out against racism in any way
And that violence undid it all.
The Fed should have cracked down harder on the violence, but didn’t.
So I don’t get putting the blame on the fed instead of the violent racists…
I wasn’t blaming the fed. I’m blaming specifically Andrew Johnson. He gave in to confederates. There was a plan to give land to former slaves, but he undid it all after Lincoln was shot. He was the reason the fed didn’t crack down harder on the violence. He supported the racists.
Man…
To be honest my brain saw Jackson and not Johnson last time.
I know enough about Johnson to know trying to toss him in one side of the line or the other is incredibly tough even for history buffs who know exactly where everyone else was and exactly how the line was drawn.
Like, literally hours before Lincoln was shot, they had met and Johnson was telling Lincoln he was going too easy on them. He was against confederates voting, and only did pardons for the (relatively) poor. But he personally owned over a dozen slaves, his problem was they were traitors, not slavers.
But he also didn’t want a strong federal government, just like Lincoln.
Don’t forget, the civil war was really because the slave states wanted a strong fed that would enforce it’s will on the states. The Free states and the Fed were fighting on the side against what you wanted him to do.
The whole thing is a lot more complicated than what we learned in even highschool.
But I can say with confidence:
The only thing Johnson hated more than traitors, was rich traitors. And he’d have probably executed them all if he thought he could’ve gotten away with it.
I still feel like we are talking about two different people. Almost non of what you said aligns with what I remember, but I don’t remember learning much about him in high school at all. I just remember that there was a plan for reconstruction and he threw most of it out. In the show “Manhunt” they made it seem like he did that to appease the rich confederates who he thought were instrumental to the economy.
