Who “won” Reconstruction?

[Andersonh1]

Did the South win Reconstruction? I've heard that claim before. I've stated on more than one occasion that the South remained in poverty for almost a century after the Civil War, which could only have happened because the rest of the country stood by and watched it happen without putting resources into the region to help it recover.

https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/who-won-reconstruction/

Prager U and the American Battlefield Trust recently teamed-up to sponsor this six minute video by Princeton University’s Dr. Allen Guelzo who claims that “the North won the Civil War but the (white) South won Reconstruction.” The photo below taken forty-five years after the Civil War shows the true economic conditions of Guelzo’s supposed Southern victors. There was little change in their primitive working conditions for another thirty or forty years. As late as 1940 half of sharecroppers were white as were two thirds of tenant farmers.

-------------

Professor Guelzo’s biggest error is his assertion that the South’s impoverishment resulted from an end to Republican Reconstruction in 1877. In reality, it was caused by the wreckage of the Civil War, twelve to seventeen years earlier. Upon returning home after their surrender the typical Confederate soldier found his family in a condition of near, or actual, starvation.

Historian David L. Cohn writes: “When there was a shortage of work stock, the few surviving animals were passed from neighbor to neighbor. [When] there was no work stock [the men] hitched themselves to the plow. By ingenuity, backbreaking toil, and cruel self-denial thousands of Southern farmers survived reconstruction . . . They received no aid from any source, nor any sympathy outside the region.” Despite population growth the South did not reach its prewar level of economic output until 1900. Not until 1950 did it regain its 73rd-percentile prewar ranking in per capita income, which was still well below the national average.​

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Did the South win Reconstruction? I've heard that claim before. I've stated on more than one occasion that the South remained in poverty for almost a century after the Civil War, which could only have happened because the rest of the country stood by and watched it happen without putting resources into the region to help it recover.

Yes, socialism and a more progressive welfare state would have possibly solved all the southern states problems after their foolish and ill-conceived rebellion. Further, a more equitable distribution of the dreaded pre... and then post war tariff receipts-- to pay for the war-- would have likely advanced recovery.

 

[Andersonh1]

Or perhaps something like the Marshall Plan, applied to the South, would have greatly helped with reconciliation. Would the "Lost Cause" and looking back at the past have held such appeal if life in the present was better? Did keeping or allowing the South to remain impoverished help keep the people there alienated from the rest of the country more than they would otherwise have been? Food for thought.

The poverty of Southern rural life is something that has touched my life, which is one reason I'm interested in this topic. I still have a few living relatives who grew up in the poor South of the 20s, 30s and 40s, though most have passed on at this point. I've heard the stories about what they had to do to make a living. I wish I had more stories of life during that time. In our prosperous modern age, it's hard to appreciate how hard things were almost a century ago.

 

[rittmeister]

Or perhaps something like the Marshall Plan, applied to the South, would have greatly helped with reconciliation. Would the "Lost Cause" and looking back at the past have held such appeal if life in the present was better? Did keeping or allowing the South to remain impoverished help keep the people there alienated from the rest of the country more than they would otherwise have been? Food for thought.

The poverty of Southern rural life is something that has touched my life, which is one reason I'm interested in this topic. I still have a few living relatives who grew up in the poor South of the 20s, 30s and 40s, though most have passed on at this point. I've heard the stories about what they had to do to make a living. I wish I had more stories of life during that time. In our prosperous modern age, it's hard to appreciate how hard things were almost a century ago.

that's a 20th century concept - not having 'the south' pay up for the war was quite advanced for the 19th

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Or perhaps something like the Marshall Plan, applied to the South, would have greatly helped with reconciliation. Would the "Lost Cause" and looking back at the past have held such appeal if life in the present was better? Did keeping or allowing the South to remain impoverished help keep the people there alienated from the rest of the country more than they would otherwise have been? Food for thought.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

De-am-ed Yankees...

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Oh what the hell...

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

Did the South win Reconstruction? I've heard that claim before. I've stated on more than one occasion that the South remained in poverty for almost a century after the Civil War, which could only have happened because the rest of the country stood by and watched it happen without putting resources into the region to help it recover.

https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/who-won-reconstruction/

Prager U and the American Battlefield Trust recently teamed-up to sponsor this six minute video by Princeton University’s Dr. Allen Guelzo who claims that “the North won the Civil War but the (white) South won Reconstruction.” The photo below taken forty-five years after the Civil War shows the true economic conditions of Guelzo’s supposed Southern victors. There was little change in their primitive working conditions for another thirty or forty years. As late as 1940 half of sharecroppers were white as were two thirds of tenant farmers.

-------------

Professor Guelzo’s biggest error is his assertion that the South’s impoverishment resulted from an end to Republican Reconstruction in 1877. In reality, it was caused by the wreckage of the Civil War, twelve to seventeen years earlier. Upon returning home after their surrender the typical Confederate soldier found his family in a condition of near, or actual, starvation.

Historian David L. Cohn writes: “When there was a shortage of work stock, the few surviving animals were passed from neighbor to neighbor. [When] there was no work stock [the men] hitched themselves to the plow. By ingenuity, backbreaking toil, and cruel self-denial thousands of Southern farmers survived reconstruction . . . They received no aid from any source, nor any sympathy outside the region.” Despite population growth the South did not reach its prewar level of economic output until 1900. Not until 1950 did it regain its 73rd-percentile prewar ranking in per capita income, which was still well below the national average.​

The Southern whites won Reconstruction because they could enjoy 100 years racial superiority. The South could even enjoy continuing slavery except they called it " chain gangs". The Documentary " the 13" goes into great detail about continued legal slavery in the South.
The Marshall Plan was enacted to fight the spread of Soviet sponsored communism in Western Europe .
There was nothing equivalent to the Soviet Union in the Nineteenth Century.
There was never a need to give any economic aid to the South. Southern whites had the choice of making do , or emigrating to other states or even as some did immigrating to other nations.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[MattL]

Did the South win Reconstruction? I've heard that claim before. I've stated on more than one occasion that the South remained in poverty for almost a century after the Civil War, which could only have happened because the rest of the country stood by and watched it happen without putting resources into the region to help it recover.

https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/who-won-reconstruction/

Prager U and the American Battlefield Trust recently teamed-up to sponsor this six minute video by Princeton University’s Dr. Allen Guelzo who claims that “the North won the Civil War but the (white) South won Reconstruction.” The photo below taken forty-five years after the Civil War shows the true economic conditions of Guelzo’s supposed Southern victors. There was little change in their primitive working conditions for another thirty or forty years. As late as 1940 half of sharecroppers were white as were two thirds of tenant farmers.

-------------

Professor Guelzo’s biggest error is his assertion that the South’s impoverishment resulted from an end to Republican Reconstruction in 1877. In reality, it was caused by the wreckage of the Civil War, twelve to seventeen years earlier. Upon returning home after their surrender the typical Confederate soldier found his family in a condition of near, or actual, starvation.

Historian David L. Cohn writes: “When there was a shortage of work stock, the few surviving animals were passed from neighbor to neighbor. [When] there was no work stock [the men] hitched themselves to the plow. By ingenuity, backbreaking toil, and cruel self-denial thousands of Southern farmers survived reconstruction . . . They received no aid from any source, nor any sympathy outside the region.” Despite population growth the South did not reach its prewar level of economic output until 1900. Not until 1950 did it regain its 73rd-percentile prewar ranking in per capita income, which was still well below the national average.​

An interesting topic. I think the question is ludicrous but fun to consider.

I think in this case context is everything.

If you are asking who won Reconstruction restricted to the South... so say

A) Whites
B) Blacks

A) North
B) South

or say some hodgepodge of options

A) Northern Whites
B) Southern Whites
C) Blacks

A) Unionists
B) Pro-Confederates

etc...

I think if you are specifically separating it from who won the War then you need to exclude the damage to the South based on the war. I think much (if not nearly all) of the poverty mentioned in that blog would be explained by the damage of the war and not Reconstruction.

You'd have to ask if Reconstruction (outside of the war) damaged the Southern Whites in the long term?

From a Civil Rights perspective it's hard to claim anything but a victory for Southern Whites who wanted to keep Blacks repressed (not that their weren't victories that were remembered in Black culture).

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

Or perhaps something like the Marshall Plan, applied to the South, would have greatly helped with reconciliation. Would the "Lost Cause" and looking back at the past have held such appeal if life in the present was better? Did keeping or allowing the South to remain impoverished help keep the people there alienated from the rest of the country more than they would otherwise have been? Food for thought.

The poverty of Southern rural life is something that has touched my life, which is one reason I'm interested in this topic. I still have a few living relatives who grew up in the poor South of the 20s, 30s and 40s, though most have passed on at this point. I've heard the stories about what they had to do to make a living. I wish I had more stories of life during that time. In our prosperous modern age, it's hard to appreciate how hard things were almost a century ago.

What alienation are you referring to? Southern whites flocked to fight against the Spanish just a generation after the ACW. There never was a mass anti draft movement in the South in any major US conflict including Vietnam.
Southern whites never supported Secession post ACW.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[rittmeister]

You'd have to ask if Reconstruction (outside of the war) damaged the Southern Whites in the long term?

it's a bit like losing wwII without being some sort of a nazi, right?

 

[MattL]

it's a bit like losing wwII without being some sort of a nazi, right?

Yeah... I guess an analogy might be what damage was done to nazi-supporters/regions in post WWII treatment outside of the war damage itself.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

it's a bit like losing wwII without being some sort of a nazi, right?

there were No Nazis after the closure of zhe war.


Well, except for those that got caught.

 

[rittmeister]

there were No Nazis after the closure of zhe war.


Well, except for those that got caught.

everybody was in the resistance - i realy wonder who wore all those black and brown uniforms

 

[O' Be Joyful]

everybody was in the resistance - i realy wonder who wore all those black and brown uniforms

Ya got me. Where did they all go?

Oh yeah, Odessa.

 

[rittmeister]

Ya got me. Where did they all go?

Oh yeah, Odessa.

that's only black uniforms

 

[O' Be Joyful]

that's only black uniforms

 

[Andersonh1]

An interesting topic. I think the question is ludicrous but fun to consider.

Take up the ludicrousness or not with Allen Guelzo, not that he's the only one to make this claim:

https://www.prageru.com/video/reconstruction-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

From the opening of the video: "The North won the first war. The South won the second."

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

there were No Nazis after the closure of zhe war.


Well, except for those that got caught.

Plus the Nazi party in various forms still exists very much so in not only the US and all of Western Europe put even in Eastern Europe very much including Russia. One can kill people until the cows come home but one can not kill an ideologically.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

Take up the ludicrousness or not with Allen Guelzo, not that he's the only one to make this claim:

https://www.prageru.com/video/reconstruction-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

From the opening of the video: "The North won the first war. The South won the second."

Also @MattL Guzlao is correct if by winning he means the Southern whites won the right to oppress black people for a good one hundred years and alter school history text books to show the Confederacy was righteous. The Southern did absolutely loose in the sense that they could not establish an independent Slave republic.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[MattL]

Take up the ludicrousness or not with Allen Guelzo, not that he's the only one to make this claim:

https://www.prageru.com/video/reconstruction-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

From the opening of the video: "The North won the first war. The South won the second."

Yeah sounds exactly like Guelzo. I like him but take a ton of what he says with a grain of salt. He's definitely more about the catchy presentation then accuracy. With that said I'm not sure I disagree with him on some level. Once I get some time I'll dig into he article and video and give you a real and proper opinion.