But Locke did not make the Constitution. Any constituted grievance must find its precedent in the Constitution, in which ambiguity is the watchword, and not in contradiction to Locke's principles.In the eyes of the southern states, the laws and rulings of the federal government fit Locke’s statement, “This legislative is not only the supreme power of the common-wealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it.”[4] Thus, the northern states, in their blatant and nullifying actions toward that “sacred and unalterable legislative” body, had violated the covenant compact that bound north and south, free and slave, together at the Constitution Convention. This constituted the grievance to which the southern states would be able to secede.
But Locke did not make the Constitution. Any constituted grievance must find its precedent in the Constitution, in which ambiguity is the watchword, and not in contradiction to Locke's principles.
Reconstruction had many contingent effects that would manifest themselves, and many policies for Reconstruction were contingently related to the outcomes of the Civil War. For one, the south was to experience a new industrialization and modernization to rebuild its infrastructure and economy. Old South romantics and agrarians were steadfastly opposed to this. On another hand, Reconstruction promised to make millions of Afro-Americans politically and socially equal to millions of poor Whites, and the poor Whites resented this because it would displace them from their middle-ground status between the vestiges of the southern agrarian upper-class and the underclass Afro-American community held in bondage. At the same, and as described hitherto, there were strong implications for political change and political philosophy that would be ushered in through the enacting of Reconstruction’s planned amendments and new policies to build “a new south.” Not to mention that the coming struggle over Reconstruction was equally seen as the last hurrah of the Confederacy, the final moment that whatever ideals the Confederacy had fought for could somehow be preserved from perceived Yankee lechery and tyranny.
Thaddaeus Stevens is a man I want to know more about ... but also a project likely for a different decade.
...Which neatly sets the scene for us to leap into the heady world of Carpetbaggers and Redeemers, of sharecropping and poll taxes, of the "Lost Cause" and the "Solid South," and so on. Hopefully we'll get a good look at each of those as the narrative advances.
I'm also eagerly looking forward to getting into the thick of the cowmen, the railroad barons, and the oil and steel men once the focus turns to the Gilded Age.
Overall, glad to see you bringing this back, volks
I'll be glad to see you continuing to write about Reconstruction.
And William Jennings Bryan, elected? That'll be a change.
Sherman and Bomber Harris have much in common, I think.
Hurrah, Hurrah! We Bring the Jubilee! Hurrah, Hurrah! The Flag that makes you free!
I've often wondered how different American history would have been had there been a more comprehensive effort to break the Southern aristocracy by confiscating their estates as well as their "contraband." I'm personally convinced that one of the reasons that Reconstruction fell apart in the long term was precisely because the same former slaveowners kept title to their vast plantation tracts, effectively locking the new freedman out of possessing property of their own and thus being able to make an independent livelihood.
On the other hand, such a heavy-handed approach might well have drawn out the war itself over at least another decade, even if the Confederacy as an organized state had already been broken.
A fascinating and traumatising business. As always it is intriguing how strongly personal faith guides actions in American history. I am particularly intrigued at something I had not been aware of previously, that Sherman married a Catholic woman at a time when such marriages between denominations must have been unfathomably rare.
That's a rather different Sherman. 'Our' Sherman had a conflicted history with Indian relations - he seems to have been respected by the Indian leaders for telling them plain truth, and feared for his unrelenting enforcement of reservation orders. This Sherman seems not just hard but actively vengeful - a thin line but one I think the historical Sherman did not cross. And as you note, Sherman (like just about everyone in the North) had a complicated view of slavery, African-Americans and race relations. I find this Sherman troubling.
I do think our present circumstances would be different if Reconstruction-era congresses had taken a hard line against the 'readmitted' state constitutions. But the North and the Army did take a hard line against the KKK, at least eventually. Had the KKK been permitted to keep growing at its rapid pace (in Northern states as well as Southern) we might have had an earlier encounter with a 'Jim Crow' totalitarianism on a national scale.