Centerfield

Jon,

What you are describing was the traditional view of Reconstruction. If you read Eric Foner (admittedly very liberal) and some other historians, you get a different view of it. Undoubtedly, there were excesses carried out, but Foner's view is that the problem with Reconstruction is that it was ended too soon. If it had continued, we might have avoided the 100 year career of Jim Crown. The existing southern governments weren't going to give blacks any place in it; at least under Reconstruction, there was some effort to improve their lot. That ended after Reconstruction ended and I don't believe that Jim Crow was simply a reaction to Reconstruction. There was no way that, on their own, the southerners were going to give blacks any power. The KKK wasn't a reaction to injustices of Reconstruction; it was a reaction to blacks being given any kind of rights. The "Redeemers" wanted to redeem the south for the white race. Now, I suppose you could argue that with a less punitive reconstruction, the south would have been less resistant to bringing blacks within the fold of citizenship but I find that highly doubtful.

Exactly. Jon, you make an interesting albeit wrongheaded point. I think that while certain mistakes were made, the idea of REconstruction was right, just, and necessary, and its betrayal in 1876 allowed Jim Crow to come to pass. The South was not willing to follow the terms of their surrender, and do the right thing, so they had to compelled.

While it's true that Lincoln favored more moderate measures at first, I believe had he lived, he would have supported most of the Radical Republican measures (except probably the Ironclad Oaths).

The betrayal of Reconstruction was a tragedy, and it set back racial progress by a century.

Oh, and as Marc said, the KKK was opposed to giving blacks any kind of rights at all. It's a simple as that.

> If it had continued, we might have avoided the 100 year career of Jim Crown

Yeah, Crown was a nasty character ;-) It's true that, in theory, it would've been nice to have Jim Crow over early.

But I just don't see it, because the most Northern already had Jim Crow on their books, very much by the popular will. Black equality was very much a minority view. Thus, that wasn't one of Lincoln's goals.

And the Reconstruction Laws were politically dumb because they made it impossible for even sympathetic or repenting portions of the Southern elite to help. They were about revenge and purges, not moving forward.

I'm sure people had different reasons for joining the KKK. For some, it would've been about the blacks. For others, it would've been about not getting over the war. For still others, it would've been because somebody in the family was disenfranchised or treated badly by Reconstruction officials. Admittedly, we don't know what the balance was. Now, actually, my memory had betrayed me on the KKK - I was thinking it started during the bad phase, but it was actually pretty immediate. So it would've been around, just maybe not as big.

But I just don't see it, because the most Northern already had Jim Crow on their books, very much by the popular will. Black equality was very much a minority view. Thus, that wasn't one of Lincoln's goals.

Better go check your statute books and note some dates there, Jon.

The original KKK lasted only a few years and had been throughly suppressed by the end of Reconstruction. It did not reappear until 1915 (see below). The "Redemption" movement took its place, and didn't have to operate in secret--there were no federal troops left to suppress it.

"Jim Crow" refers specifically to the segregation and rights-restriction laws passed in ex-Confederate states after Reconstruction. It's usually bounded as 1876-1965. The first recognized "Jim Crow" law was segregation of railroads in Louisiana in 1890, though some places had passed local laws before then, including the 1876 Arkansas miscegenation laws. Private companies such as railroads had already begun segregation practices as soon as Reconstruction ended, claiming that as private businesses they could do as they pleased.

The "Black Codes" in the northern states ended along with the Civil War. While de facto segregation continued in many places, it took the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision to put the legal sting back in segregation laws by legitimizing the new "separate but equal" segregation. Which was rarely if ever equal, of course. Plessy is what marked the spread of Jim Crow to the North, and it followed in the wake of the post-Reconstruction exodus of blacks from the South, those fleeing the "Redemptionist's" bloody ways. That exodus generally ran from the 1880's through the 1920's. "Jim Crow" moved north along with the influx of blacks into Northern cities.

Legal segregation in the so-called "Progressive Era" was officially extended to the federal civil service by that famous "progressive" Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Garfield and Roosevelt and Taft had previously placed educated blacks in high appointed positions within the federal government--the rise of educated blacks such as Blanche Bruce and William T. Vernon and Judson Lyons in the heirarchy of the federal government ended rather abruptly with Wilson.

The release of Griffith's homage to the Klan and white supremacy (The Birth of A Nation) on the eve of WW1 entrenched segregation across the country. It also marked (indeed, inspired) the return of the Klan.

Whoopsie! You're right, Tully - I was completely wrong about the KKK. Dunno what I was thinking. So, no, NOTHING would've been better for blacks if Lincoln had lived.
But, Tully, most of the Northern Black Codes didn't fall until well INTO Reconstruction. Blacks could vote in only a very few states even in the North before the 15th Amendment was passed. That's part of why Southerners saw the harsh Reconstruction as unjust. The evidence is rather there of majority belief in Black inferiority until well until the last century.

Remember that in the period after Reconstruction, the Victorian era, the majority opinion was that the white race ruled the Earth because of its inherent superiority.

Mind you, to remind you what I'm arguing, there's no doubt that all those Black Laws and Jim Crow were evil, no matter when they were passed, revoked, or superseded.

I'm just saying that the crackdown phase of Reconstruction was foolishly imagined and carried out. And a bit hypocritical and ultimately hopeless because a big majority even in the North was racist.

You'd need some cites to convince me of Northern Black Codes in the 1865-1896 era, Jon. AFAIK, they mostly didn't appear until the Plessy ruling. The original Black Codes in the South were quashed by the military occupation in 1866.

What there was in the North was an increasing de facto segregation in places, concurrent with the exodus of blacks to the North, mostly post-Reconstruction. But I'm not aware of any de jure Northern codes pre-Plessy. Plessy opened the gates, with its pernicious conscience-salving "separate but equal" wording.

The 15th was ratified within five years of war's end. And the right to vote prior to that was not exactly unrestricted, as my great-grandmother once pointed out to me when I was a child. (She cast her first vote in 1920, at the age of 42.)

Re: KKK--it's not as if the Klansmen themselves vanished. The organization may have been totally suppressed, but all the same people were still there, as the "Redeemers" movement showed.