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It certainly wouldn't have gone perfectly but I think the best evidence that it would have eventually worked out for the better is how much political power former slaves had shortly after the Civil War ended while Reconstruction, in whatever diluted form, was actually being attempted. This is the period we get the first black senator, Hiram Revels from Mississippi. Further, In 1868 black Americans made up a majority of the South Carolina's state legislature and opened the South's first public school system. Former slaves started taking up tons of local political offices as well. They wielded true local political power and although there were still racists opposed to their inclusion in society, it was much harder to extract former slaves from that society and subjugate them again. Once federal troops withdrew from the South all of these reforms were taken away, violently and illegally, by the people who weren't punished under Johnson, the violence and subjugation became much easier. This is how we get Jim Crow etc.
I mean, if this period had gone on for long enough for white Southerners to benefit from it, maybe a generation or so, we wouldn't even have the modern Republican party since it only exists today as an extension of white Southern racism that was enabled by Johnson. Instead, we get generation after generation of white Southern children being indoctrinated into racist beliefs because the leaders of the Confederacy were allowed to spread their hateful ideals throughout their society after they lost the war. We'd live in a much more egalitarian society as a whole if that hadn't happened. Again, not without its problems, but we would have solved the major problem. It's most of my issue with people today jumping to Trump being the worst president, not only is it recency bias but he's just the obvious result of decisions made by Johnson et. al. during Reconstruction.
Absolutely phenomenal points, especially how the growing political power of black citizens would have made a much larger impact on their futures in society, had it not been arrested by racist Southern state governments, and that was due to the Federal government pulling out, and letting the South govern themselves.
We can't do anything about it now, but we can learn from it, and not let the current MAGA government, an outgrowth of the worst racist policies our nation has ever tolerated, survive to live another day, once they've been stopped. We will need to crush MAGA, and fully purge it from American government and society. We can't make the mistake of letting these traitors off the hook, again, or we'll be back here in a other 100 years. We can't keep letting these moronic losers suppress our nation's progress any longer.
Yes I fully agree, and thank you for the conversation. However I am deeply cynical American society will excise their fascist tumor since they have such a long history of refusing to punish criminals, enforce laws, and enact meaningful reform.
I totally understand that, which is why I'm saying that this UNPRECEDENTED situation will require unprecedented solutions, and we have to FORCE our elected officials to not fall back on the old patterns of following the easiest path of least resistance, and leave the same poison in our system.
IF we get out of this, we will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to move forward with entirely new strategies that will truly reconfigure our society to support American Citizens, and not just Sociopathic Oligarchs (many foreign) and their amoral, trans-National corporations. We can't squander that opportunity this time. Our citizens, the world, and history require that to redeem our Nation.