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This Mighty Scourge of War: A Reconstruction-Era Quest

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dreameater said:
Keep in mind that in Real life the planter where dismantled too, it didn't matter in the end though as poor white populist would keep white supremacy Jim crow in place for decades. Most important is getting buy in from poor whites to not join terrorist groups(I'm not going to say not be racist this is 19th century southern America).
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They weren't in fact dismantled though. They were allowed to rebrand and rebuild by forcing freedmen into sharecropping.

dreameater said:
Actually, no the poor whites wouldn't last that long past reconstruction, the planter class was displaced by populist who where against them, nonetheless these populists supported by poor whites would still continue the Jim crow creed and would be the main animators of southern politics until depression to arguably even civil rights( the rather infamous Huey Long while less racist then his peers sprouted out of this tradition). We need poor whites buy in, the economy shifted in our tl and Jim crow still stuck around.
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Poor whites are poor because there's no economy outside of the planters and farming the marginal land they didn't want. The economic shift being offered here isn't just replacing slavery with regular land owner rentseeking and keeping the poor whites poor. It's proposing to invest in southern industry, which in fact didn't happen OTL.
 
[X] Plan: Gaslight Gatekeep Gerrymander
[X] Plan: Dixie Be Damned
[X] Plan: Hammer and Hoe

I'm partial to the idea that bringing in foreigners might make things worse. So I'll spread my support a bit.
 
dreameater said:
Actually, no the poor whites wouldn't last that long past reconstruction, the planter class was displaced by populist who where against them, nonetheless these populists supported by poor whites would still continue the Jim crow creed and would be the main animators of southern politics until depression to arguably even civil rights( the rather infamous Huey Long while less racist then his peers sprouted out of this tradition). We need poor whites buy in, the economy shifted in our tl and Jim crow still stuck around.
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Referring to the economically populist Dixiecrats as having ,,displaced" or having been ,,against" the planters in any sort of way shows a comical misunderstanding of who those people actually were.The ,,populists" you're talking about who helped maintain Jim Crow(the Wilsonian Democrats to give a infamous example) were directly backed by the planters who wanted to keep their power and privilege,and to maintain white supremacy across the south(the three of them being highly intertwined).Their populism was a mix of opportunism taking advantage of Republicans becoming massively pro-business and corrupt(but i repeat myself) and pragmatism to keep the poor whites in line with limited reforms,the idea of trying to refer to them as being separate groups is nonsensical,they were two parasites who directly fed and maintained the other,therefore no planters=no Dixiecrats,or at least a vastly weakened group of them compared to OTL.
 
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    • Scheduled vote count started by Kirook on Feb 20, 2024 at 3:55 AM, finished with 86 posts and 75 votes.
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    Chapter 10: A Desert Called Peace
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    • [X] Initiate a military crackdown against the white supremacists.

    [X] Undermine the opposition by shifting the basis of the Southern economy.

    September 1, 1866

    Debate in both the legislative and executive branches was intense, but short. Indeed, for the sake of all the lives endangered by the violence, it could not be otherwise. And in the end, the program of the Radicals for ending the Bloody Winter won out in the halls of power.

    The Confederate States of America would be ripped out of Southern soil, root and stem.

    The primary instrument by which this was achieved was the mass deployment of the Union Army to crush white supremacist agitators. And crush them they did, with vigor and determination. A military insurgency led by the remnants of the Confederate Army might have been able to put up a fight, but the Klan as it was—faced with an Army radicalized by the White Camelia Conspiracy and determined to carry out its orders by any means necessary—could not. With the newly-passed Civil Rights Act at their back and the Fourteenth Amendment making its way through state governments for ratification, the armed forces of the Union acted with the full mandate of the federal government to enforce equal justice under the law.

    But their mandate came with a caveat: they would be enforcing that justice on their own. Busy preparing the economic groundwork for the creation of the "new South", the government could provide no further military support or political backing…and as such, the responsibility of restoring order to the South fell on the military and the military alone.

    The result was a brutal crackdown campaign that relied primarily on force and hearsay, as Union soldiers did whatever they felt was warranted to root out "traitors and conspirators". Summary executions and accusations of guilt by association were commonplace, and some regiments even resorted to scorched-earth tactics in areas believed to be sheltering the Klan. ("RIP Atlanta: 1847-1866," proclaimed one satirical cartoon when the city was occupied a second time following a series of race riots.) The Army was a blunt instrument with no scalpel to accompany it, and the result was a demographic and economic disaster in the South.

    Despite that calamity, though, the plan did produce advantages as well. Chief among these was that it accomplished its primary objective: the power of white supremacist militias in the former Confederate States was broken for a generation, at least. Socioeconomic, rather than military, concerns would be the guide of Reconstruction henceforth. Another benefit was a closer approach to the final closing of the book on the White Camelia Conspiracy, as Michael O'Laughlen was killed in a shootout with Union troops in North Carolina, leaving only David Herold unaccounted for.

    As the military portion of the operation came to an end, the agrarian and industrial one began to come into effect. Congress had an ambitious plan to dismantle the Slave Power by ending the South's dependence on the plantation-owning class, and the crackdown and the damage it caused proved to be equal parts blessing and curse for that plan in many ways. In some places, land reform was hampered where arable land had been burned or farmhouses and equipment destroyed; in others, the demise of the previous owners made it easy to divide their former holdings. Industry struggled to spring up without the critical infrastructure to support it, but the conflagration had also swept aside aging and rickety edifices to make room for modernity. Government greenbacks sometimes forced out and sometimes aligned with the private interests of magnates like Vanderbilt and Gould, producing shifting lines of allegiance that changed almost by the day. But the recovery was only beginning, and the effect of all of this was still far out on the horizon.

    The more pressing concern was what to do with the White Camelia conspirators and the former heads of the Confederacy, since those who were still amongst the living were almost all in Union captivity. The Radicals (and, by now, the bulk of the Liberals) were still calling for a mass treason trial as a grand gesture to officially end the rebellion, but War Democrats suggested that the trials be held individually and without fanfare. Some of their advocacy for this arose from a desire not to continue symbolically "kicking" a supine South, but others were simply pragmatists who believed that such a large spectacle would distract too much of the government's attention from Reconstruction and other matters of national security, pointing to the Bloody Winter as a sobering example of what could happen if such lapses continued for too long.

    But there was also a growing strand of Radicals who wanted a mass trial for more than just symbolic reasons. In their thinking, the entire Civil War and the conspiracy that had followed were proof positive that slavers would rather destroy the whole nation than give up their "property". They believed that the trials could help determine how the conspirators had been tied to the Confederate leadership, but more importantly, why the great national catastrophe of the last five years had occurred. Had the war and the assassinations simply been the product of greedy hearts or deranged minds? Or was there a more fundamental reason why America had been rocked to its core—a flaw at the very heart of the nation that the Slave Power had exploited?

    The President, the Supreme Court, and Congress pondered their choices, and the visions they represented for guiding the United States of America forward…

    National stability is shaky.
    The government's legitimacy is improving.
    The capital is recovering.
    The mood of the War Democrats is concerned.
    The mood of the Liberal Republicans is concerned.
    The mood of the Radical Republicans is concerned.
    There are no major Confederate armies remaining in the field.
    The status of Reconstruction is hampered by economic devastation.
    The intensity of conflict on the frontier is dropping.
    Of the assassins of Lincoln and his trusted subordinates, two been killed, five have been captured, and the status of the last one is unknown.
    Hold the treason trials individually.Hold a mass treason trial.
    This will allow the government's full focus to be placed on Reconstruction and permit easier crisis responses during the trial period but will be less effective in educating the public about the dangers of white supremacy.This may distract the government and will generally increase radicalism for good and for ill, but the findings of the court may also open the door to new reforms that might not otherwise be possible.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Hold a mass treason trial.

    Let there be no doubt as to how this happened.
     
    [X] Hold a mass treason trial.

    Somewhat wary about this one but I think the digging into whys is hopefully worth leaving Reconstruction to struggle. I've been voting for "we have problems besides just reconstruction" for a while I shouldn't give up now!
     
    [X] Hold a mass treason trial

    Let the nation see, loud and clear, why these men are about to swing from the gallows, and why the political force that animated them must be smashed to atoms.
     
    Kirook said:
    The Radicals (and, by now, the bulk of the Liberals) were still calling for a mass treason trial as a grand gesture to officially end the rebellion, but War Democrats suggested that the trials be held individually and without fanfare.
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    As much as I hate to not go the radical route, if we hold a trial en-mass we allow for them to stand as a united front, we allow them to die as martyrs. We aren't in the business of make heroes out of traitors. Kill them in silence, let them die alone and afraid. Don't let white supremacy die in a blaze of glory, let it wither and die.

    [X] Hold the treason trials individually.

    If we do end up holding a trial for them all together, we shouldn't let them get last words, we can't let them say something that will breath new life into the white supremacy and confederate movement.
     
    [X] Hold a mass treason trial.
     
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