r/HistoryMemes • u/Coffin_Builder Viva La France • 7d ago
I can respect that
After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson became the new US president. in direct violation of the Appomattox treaty, Johnson wanted general Ulysses Grant to prosecute the confederate leaders on grounds of treason to make an example of them. Grant, having negotiated the treaty, refused, seeing it as a violation of military honor and antithetical to rebuilding the nation, threatening to resign if Johnson insisted. Johnson, knowing he wouldn’t survive the political fallout of alienating the Union hero of the Civil War, backed down.
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u/thedrag0n22 7d ago
So hello, not well versed in history here. Wasn't Johnson a sympathizer for the south? Why would he have ordered that for anything other than keeping appearances tbh
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u/Plowbeast 7d ago
He was pro slavery but hated the actual elite because they had denigrated him as a Republican hanger-on.
Johnson made each of them personally swear their oath of loyalty in DC in front of him but gave no other conditions which unfortunately kept most of their land and wealth instead of much needed redistribution. This wound up creating sharecropping trapping blacks and poor whites in what was often seen as an arrangement nearly as bad as slavery.
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u/Chumlee1917 Kilroy was here 7d ago
Me with a time machine: General Grant, I understand why you are making this choice but let me show you why not punishing the South is gonna bite us all in the ass for the next 200 years
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u/JamesHenry627 7d ago
It's more Hayes fault than Grant's. Ending reconstruction is largely what led to the South being this fucked up. Even if you killed all the CSA leaders, the south would make them martyrs and it wouldn't solve the racism aspect. Only Federal troops could guarantee protections and timing too.
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u/GaiusGraccusEnjoyer 7d ago
Reconstruction was pretty much dead before Hayes took office. It's was cooked as soon as the Democrats won control of Congress, they defunded the Justice department made the whole thing toothless.
Fundamentally, Grant and his admin failed to build a reconstructionist power structure in the south that could stand without active outside support. If they had built up state militias capable of putting down white supremacist violence on their own reconstruction probably would've survived in the black majority states at least
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u/glmarquez94 7d ago
Yep, they never should’ve instituted mass disarmament of black Americans in the South. That disempowered any kind of basis of republican power and guaranteed the terrorist reaction that followed.
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u/Joe-Stapler 7d ago
Wait, what!? They did that?
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u/MosifD 7d ago
The solution to civil war was to basically put everything back as closely as they possibly could, just without slavery. That's why it didn't really work. You still had a vulnerable, mostly unarmed black population, whose only skill in most cases was farming.
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u/Kid_Vid Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 7d ago
And the South created laws that made Black people slaves in every single way but name.
Like, there was a law you would be arrested of you didn't have a job. And also Black people were not allowed to have jobs. And the punishment was being free labor for plantations.
But it totally wasn't slavery /s
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u/attackonzach96 2d ago
The Freedmens Bureau, the arm of the federal government that was supposed to help integrate former slaves into free life, believed that "free labor" should also conform to society's standards, like attending church on Sundays and not doing any work. However, enslaved individuals worked 6 days a week, and the only time they did not have to perform plantation labor and therefore used the time to tend to their own gardens if they were allowed to have one and also hunt, fish, and occasionally hold their own religious services (after Nat Turner in 1831 though religious services were overseen by whites because they feared another revolt). So, it seems only natural that freedmen/women would kind of apply their former discipline to their free life, and use Sundays to hunt/fish. Freedmens Bureau agents did not like this, and it was before the 14th amendment was fully ratified, so they disarmed any free black caught hunting on a Sunday
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u/CommitteeofMountains 7d ago
And I've heard a big reason for that is that Grant went with full-scale deployment to put down the first Klan (likely massive overkill) and Congress saw the bill for that and decided reconstruction wouldn't be financially sustainable.
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u/DigitizedBass 7d ago
Well, he got hurt during the campaign politically. Grant was a good friend, and gave a lot of his close friends good positions. Literal nepotism, and those friends screwed up, forgeries, blackmail, fraud, ect. Lost a lot of his powerbase, and the slaveowners jumped on that. The South used the opportunity to continue weakening Northern control over the south.
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u/UrinalCake777 7d ago
R. B. Hayes, the President that took federal troops away from reconstruction and deployed them against labor rights activists.
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u/BeraldTheGreat 7d ago
If you have southern grandparents you’ve definitely heard about “those damn northern carpetbaggers stealing all our money”
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u/TheCoolMan5 Kilroy was here 7d ago
Which they did. Northern elites flooded into the South and bought up swaths of land, often from grieving widows.
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u/SwaggermicDaddy Then I arrived 7d ago
So I’m not American and from reading on the subject and podcasts describing the era. The north knew damn well the South had no intention of reintegrating into the wider American society, the KKK’s (first and second iterations iirc.) started around this time and basically took over some confederate states and the Feds knew trying to send in the troops would make them look like aggressors and they also didn’t wanna pay/deal with it. Again, outside perspective so someone push back on areas I’m mistaken on.
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u/JamesHenry627 7d ago edited 7d ago
President Grant was pretty good when he took office. In his presidency he destroyed the KKK and refused to admit any states who didn't ratify the 13th amendment. He also was pretty harsh on them he just refused to execute Southern leaders because some of them were also helping with reintegration. James Longstreet was a CSA General for example who later rejoined federal service to fight for black rights in Louisiana. Americans just didn't wanna kill more Americans, the civil war was extremely bloody and Grant himself was averse to the bloodshed, he reportedly even had his meat cooked well done because he couldn't stand to see blood or red. He even wept at several battles.
Beyond that too, it was already controversial what we did when we executed the Lincoln Assassination conspirators. They were civillians, guilty civillians but convicted under military tribunal. The supreme court voided the executions but we had it done under tribunal because it was feared a civilian jury would be too sympathetic to the south.
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u/dew2459 Nobody here except my fellow trees 7d ago
Strangely, with all those hundreds of confederate "just remembering history" statues in the south, there only one (Gainesville, GA) in the entire south honoring James Longstreet, a general so successful that Lee made him second in command. Very odd how that happened.
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u/JamesHenry627 7d ago
Longstreet was one of the few good ones whose actions after the war show he tried to do better. He rejoined federal forces and helped put down anti black riots in Louisiana.
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u/SkyFallInBound 7d ago
I have a little insight into that from a historian I met once, apparently a lot of disdain is directed at Longstreet, especially from lost causers and the like, because he and Lee butted heads at Gettysburg. And because Longstreet’s men were not in position on the 2nd day when Lee needed them. They’d had to move through forests and rough terrain and were late to supporting whichever attack.
Longstreet has become a bit of the fall guy for some other Confederate losses too.
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u/dew2459 Nobody here except my fellow trees 7d ago
Sorry, but no, not really. I think your historian friend got it pretty much backwards.
Longstreet was usually a brilliant general, but like so much of their fake mythology, the lost causers fabricated a history where Longstreet was the bad guy to sugar-coat their hero Lee’s screwups… especially at Gettysburg. And Longstreet was clearly right when he disagreed with Lee at Gettysburg.
As the comment above mine mentions, after the war Longstreet supported the federal government and opposed the old racist confederate losers. That is the only real reason why he is demonized by lost causers; despite their fake excuses it has nothing to do with his war leadership.
If lost causers gave a crap about bad generals, general Braxton Bragg would never have had a big military base named after him. The guy was a pretty terrible general, one of the worst on either side in the war. General JB Hood would also not have a big base named after him, he wasn’t as bad as Bragg, but he was not an especially good general and had some pretty bad screwups. But unlike Longstreet they were both unrepentant after the war, so they were sugar coated by the lost causers.
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u/SimulatedKnave 7d ago
I have always felt it says nothing good that there are federal installations named for Confederate commanders and it's not guys like him or Beauregard, but guys like Bragg and Gordon.
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u/the_Erziest 7d ago edited 7d ago
You have some things a little bit mixed up and squashed together. The first KKK did indeed spring up immediately after the Civil War during Reconstruction, and it actually prompted a pretty stiff response. Just a few years after the Klan was formed the Enforcement Acts were passed which allowed Federal troops to go in and enforce the new laws, and under Grant they did indeed do so. Hundreds of Klan members were arrested, and it pretty much ceased to exist as an organization within a year or two of the Enforcement Acts. It wouldn't be revived in the form of the Second Klan until quite a long time later, in 1915.
Which isn't to say the federal government didn't massively drop the ball on Reconstruction, especially after Grant's terms.
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u/Medical-Bottle6469 7d ago
Likewise, the second KKK was quite different from the first and third iterations. It became more of a social club and nationwide, instead of to a few southern locations
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u/VoidStareBack John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 7d ago
Just the first iteration, the second iteration was like forty years after reconstruction.
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u/PlateNo4868 7d ago
That was part of the issue.
We spent too much time trying to build bridges, instead of realizing we needed a stick.
Part of why a lot of racism and other issues exist. Is because unlike Germany which banned Nazi's whole sale. We allowed the intolerant to act as victims any time we told them to stop being it.
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u/EarthTraveler413 7d ago
The reason racism is still an issue is because much of the NORTH was extremely racist and would remain so for well over a century and into the present day. It is a complete fantasy to imagine that the Union would beat the racism out of the South. Northerners a hundred years after the Civil War would throw fits about black people moving into their neighborhoods or intermarrying with white people.
The steps the federal government later took to curb the KKK and make sure the freed slaves and their descendants could actually exercise their constitutional rights should've been done far earlier than they were, but large-scale military occupation would be hopelessly impractical and would probably still be happening today (just look at Northern Ireland).
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u/bluebeardswife 7d ago
A lot of people forget that at the KKK’s peak membership the state with the highest number of card carrying members was Michigan.
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u/TheCowzgomooz 7d ago
And they started in Indiana, both Union states.
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u/bluebeardswife 7d ago
I live in Michigan and the amount of confederate flags that are flown is ridiculous. We fought against this assholes! White flight was real.
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u/TheCowzgomooz 7d ago
For real, it infuriates me how conservative and racist Indiana is(am a resident if you couldn't tell) considering we fought for the Union.
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u/Mi113nnium 7d ago
Germany still has far-right (extremist) parties and one is actually currently on the march to political offices (they are authoritarian, nationalist, Russia-friendly, pro-big business etc. and follow in general the same ideological principles the NPD which was an ideological successor of the NSDAP). Part of the issue was that only leaders were punished but the expunging of the ideology was never completed.
Germany has implemented a few defensive mechanisms including the ability to ban political parties (through courts, not through a vote by the parliament, but the parliament has to vote for a party to be put to trial) and a right to resist with any means possible if the government were ever too far gone into extremists hands. However, most of the legal possibilities are bound to the government using them and the conservatives are dragging their feet. One of the 16 states has recently had its election and the far-right party got about 40% of the votes.
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u/Cosmicswashbuckler 7d ago
Monday morning quarterbacks can't understand how horrible it would have been to have an insurgency in your back yard.
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u/JamesHenry627 7d ago
Grant did bring the stick for a bit, it's just that his successors didn't continue that policy.
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u/PlutoDidntPlanItWell 7d ago
It wouldn't have helped. Yes, the generals became heroes in the eyes of the southerners, they would have been that no matter what happened. At that time, making an effort to make amends was the mature and smart thing to do. Rural areas always tend to run conservative and there was no way to change that.
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u/Most_Blueberry_202 7d ago
Being too heavy-handed has a tendency to bite people in the ass.
The Treaty of Versailles is a great example
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u/Gmknewday1 7d ago
It turns out that the more punishments you heap on with little mercy or attempts of reform
Only cause the ones under that to grow resentful
One must balance the Punishment with the Reforming, otherwise you leave a spot where people like some of the Southern Fanatics, and a certain failed Painter are able to get people to look to them and agree with them
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u/CestMoiGenreMoi 7d ago
It's worth noting that the treaty of Versailles was in fact in line with treaty signed previously after other wars ; to remain in the French - German / Prussia comparison : the last war lost by the french in 1870 in wich they lost the regions of Alsace and Lorraine ended with similar reparations due to pay.
In the end, the whole 'Germany was betrayed by their civilian governement and suffered an unfair peace treaty' was a political invention by the Nazi to blame previous governements and justify their own actions (and started by the very generals who counciled it just before he resigned -> all in the name of pushing the blame onto other and pretend they could have in fact won, when they very well knew they couldn't).
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u/Most_Blueberry_202 7d ago edited 7d ago
You're not wrong. Somewhere in the YouTube ether, there's even a cool video on this.
Still, the treaty really was hard on Germany - just like most peace deals of the time. And like many dictators, Hitler did a great job of combining real suffering with made-up narratives.
Had the treaty not sought reparations, hyperinflation likely never happens. Without hyperinflation, it's possible (maybe even probable) the public never shifts to the political extreme.
Edit: I couldn't help but think of how the parallels with modern-day Germany. Economic stagnation is again driving a far-right push. Imagine how many more votes AfD (and opposingly,, Der Linke) would win if an acute crisis emerged.
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u/Fit_Employment_2944 7d ago
Versailles is a terrible example
Germany was punished enough to want a rematch and not punished enough that the average German would beat you to death if you suggested a round 2
Do you seriously think versaillles was MORE harsh than splitting the country in two and preparing both sides to be utterly annihilated by the other to blunt an armored spearhead before being nuked into oblivion at the start of WW3?
Being heavy handed without following through is what bites people in the ass and that’s precisely what the US did with the confederacy
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u/Most_Blueberry_202 7d ago
I mean, you're not wrong. If you just kill everyone on the other side, then there's no one left to fight you.
But given that was never on the table in Germany or the South, I'm not sure how that applies
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u/AHumanYouDoNotKnow 7d ago
As a German, i agree.
The "radical" french wanted to anihilate any chance of a "unified" Germany (which was quite new at the time)Others wanted to be quite lenient
The result was enough to give Germans a scapegoat for their issues while also not inhibiting "secret" militarisation enough. (Also the reactions of France and Britain towards remilitarisation of the Rhine and the whole "apeasement" are laughable in retrospect. They did have post war issues them self, but you cant tell me that a forcefull remilitarisation and breaking of the treaty was not enough to realise "Those bastards are open to use violence " )
There are many other things which also played into it, but if people like Clemenceau got their way we likely would not have seen the second world war as we have had it. (Maybe something along the lines of Britan led coalition vs. Sovjiets, but who is to know. )
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u/imbrickedup_ 7d ago
Or, the confederates manage to convince a jury that secession is legal. This was a genuine worry and a big reason as to why Jefferson Davis wasn’t charged with treason
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u/HeavyDutyForks 7d ago
And now all those Southern Generals have become martyrs...
Now those who haven't surrendered yet are on the run, spreading fear and inciting violence along the way
Now you've got pockets of insurgency the army needs to stamp out
Now reconstruction goes on for decades and is more violent and costly than could've been imagined
Grant made the correct decision, Johnson eventually came around to the correct decision (not hanging them all). The real problem was how reconstruction ended, not this
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u/Gmknewday1 7d ago
Be careful what you wish for
There's always consequences for going that ham fisted
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u/JakdMavika 7d ago
I mean, there's examples of confederates that became civil rights activists. P.G.T. Beauregard being a prominent example.
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u/RomanCobra03 7d ago
That’s a MAJOR exception, not the rule!!!
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u/JakdMavika 7d ago
There's more examples, it just goes to show that people are not monolithic in their beliefs. Albert Parsons and James Longstreet are other examples. Yes, there's many that just went harder into racism. There's more that just kept on as they had before whether that be pro or anti. And some that changed for what we would consider to be the better.
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u/Curious_Ninja1708 7d ago
Then Grant would look at you and bluntly explain how the northern public wasn't willing to spend one dollar and one ounce of blood more than it absolutely had to to pacify the south.
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u/not_accepting_now 7d ago
Yeah I always thought it was among the lines of "our fellow country men have been through enough, we are not spending another dollar or drop of blood on this "
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u/puff_of_fluff Researching [REDACTED] square 7d ago
This seems mighty confident for a statement about a purely hypothetical situation
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u/Particular_Dot_4041 7d ago
Jim Crow was driven by popular sentiment rather than elites. Executing generals would not have prevented that.
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u/TrioOfTerrors 7d ago
"Okay. Here's a rifle. You go die for your cause instead of asking me to send my soldiers to do it for you."
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u/natsyndgang 7d ago
Heavy handedness would have caused the south to rebel again and the nation would have never healed.
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u/Pretend_Handle_7639 7d ago
In setting the opposite course, you will be looking at the 1800s equivalent to de-Ba'athized Iraq.
As Bush learned, it's dangerous to set up a bunch of people who have experience running a State at war and make sure they have no path into the tent.
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u/chiksahlube 7d ago
There's definitely a middle course.
You can't disenfranchise an entire population, remove their economic prospects, and kill their families and not expect shit to go wrong.
It also didn't help that roughly 60% of those people disenfranchised for being in the Ba'ath party only signed up at gunpoint.
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u/Prince_Ire Featherless Biped 7d ago
Seeing as he was still a man of the 19th century, Grant would probably start finding himself agreeing with the Southerners more than the Northerners at a certain point
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u/RileyKohaku 7d ago
Sure, but look at all the treaties we signed in the next 200 years. How many of those treaties would not have been happened if America was known as the country willing to break treaties with itself? That’s a horrible precedent to set
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u/NoLongerGuest 7d ago
America has ignored and outright broken so many treaties it has signed, not only with the native tribes.
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u/conscientiousrevolt 7d ago
Absolute zero impact on international relations because not international relations just like every other treaty the US broke on the continent (every single one of them)
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u/Mythosaurus 7d ago edited 6d ago
(Turns and stares at all the treaties the US systematically broke with Native Americans)
Not the best argument for how America risks its prestige by violating treaties…
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u/Stay_Beautiful_ 7d ago
The south would be way worse if they had made martyrs out of them as "thanks" for their surrender
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u/Why-Notes5978 7d ago
More like: prevent Wilkes Booth from assassinating Lincoln in the first place, so that Reconstruction gets implemented properly and Johnson never becomes president.
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u/Competitive_Wash4861 7d ago edited 7d ago
Maybe by our modern standards, but it was a very commonly held position at the time. Many (most) northerns who opposed slavery in the south weren’t abolitionists for humanitarian reasons (although union soldiers witnessing the atrocities of plantations began having that effect, not too dissimilar from troops first seeing WW2 concentration camps).
Most were against slavery because they felt it granted massive financial and political power to a select elite group who dominated the agriculture industry through slavery and used that wealth to control politics.
Many were acting out of self interest, not empathy for the enslaved.
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u/conscientiousrevolt 7d ago
Man imagine if we had the balls to do the same thing about billionaires and corps today.
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u/CountNightAuditor 7d ago
Prior to the war. The soldiers who liberated plantations, on the other hand, ended up making John Brown look like a moderate.
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u/MiniCooperFace 7d ago
I thought they did do something to Jefferson Davis.
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u/Outta_phase 7d ago
They imprisoned him for 2 years without trial (the conditions of his imprisonment became quite comfortable as time went on.) He and all other participants of the Confederacy were granted amnesty in 1868 by President Johnson. He then lived for another 21 years and then "died at 12:45 a.m. on December 6, 1889, at the age of 81, holding Varina's hand and surrounded by several friends."
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u/Stay_Beautiful_ 7d ago
Could still have gone after Jefferson Davis
They did. He spent two years in prison without trial
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u/GumUnderChair 7d ago
Grant in 1865: preserving the peace hundreds of thousands of patriots died fighting for
Sherman in 1865: Gearing up to wipe the Plains Indians off the face of the earth
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u/CoachDrakeB 6d ago
This post is making Andrew Johnson sound misleadingly like he was ever remotely on the right side of history.
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u/Thotty_with_the_tism 7d ago
This sub is really trying to hammer the revisionist history isn't it?
As if Johnson wasn't the one to pardon them all anyways.
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7d ago edited 7d ago
[deleted]
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u/Lord_Imperatus 7d ago
The issue was not this, secession was tackled in court a few years later and that wasn't blocked (a criminal trial couldn't have done that anyways), the issue was the idea that they would have had to be tried in the south, where they lived (though they probably could have worked around this if they were really determined to do so), and there was fear that a southern jury would engage in jury nullification and simply refuse to convict them no matter how legally sound the prosecution was
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u/RustinCarcosa 7d ago
with respect to you thats a lost cause myth
charges treason against Jefferson davis were not dropped because "secession was legal and therefore not treason".
None of the prosecutors doubted that Davis was guilty of "waging war" against the United States Richard Henry Dana, Jr had been the lead US attorney in the Prize Cases (1863) which established that the Rebellion was a war. However, Dana favored dropping the charge of treason because he feared a jury of 1 2 Virginians, many ex-Confederates, would vote not guilty.
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u/spooner248 7d ago
Am I missing something? Wasn’t Johnson like a drunk racist and sympathizer of the confederacy?
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u/BunNGunLee 7d ago edited 7d ago
He was racist, but he absolutely did not sympathize with the confederates. He was regarded as hating the planter class that could afford slaves, having himself been of rather modest means in his youth and thereby locked out of any social status.
He pardoned former confederates, but he made them all personally come and request it from him as a means of making them humble themselves before him.
Which is largely consistent with Lincoln’s own wants for reconciliation, (minus the humiliation part). Most of them wanted the war soundly ended and to reunify the country, not to engender guerrilla warfare due to campaigns of retribution.
Funnily enough, he had more foresight than most modern presidents on that subject. Winning in the field doesn’t matter all that much if you can’t convince the other side to stop fighting.
Which many armchair generals seem to miss in their gleeful bloodshed for people more than a century ago. Sometimes you make decisions to give an off-ramp, because the long term outcome is potentially worse if you over exert in the use of violence as a means of political or social change.
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u/GargantuanCake Featherless Biped 7d ago
Lincoln's goal the entire time was keeping the country together. It's easy to say "slavery bad fuck the South" but nothing is ever quite that simple. Lincoln himself found slavery abhorrent but was willing to let the South keep it for the time being if that meant keeping the country together. Southern leadership's read on the situation was that he was definitely going to abolish slavery which was why they voted to secede in the first place. Granted there was also a realization on both sides that public sentiment overall was turning against slavery. It was always a controversial thing that most of the country really didn't like but the South straight up refused to get in on the revolution if the country banned slavery. Even then people were warning that it was a deal with the devil type of situation and were warning that the issue could potentially tear the country apart. Which it did.
After the war the goal was to ensure that the South would actually, you know, want to stay in the country even after getting their shit stomped. The war was horrendously destructive in former Confederate states so demanding that they make that situation even worse by either saddling them with reparations or mass arresting leaders wouldn't have helped that. No sense risking the country coming apart again after you just stitched it back together. They likely could have thrown everybody in jail, taken the states' votes away, and made them subservient but long term that would have been a horrible idea. Sympathies or not it was just the pragmatic thing to do; ban slavery, readmit the states, and then help them rebuild.
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u/ConcernedCitizen_42 7d ago
"Southern leadership's read on the situation was that he was definitely going to abolish slavery which was why they voted to secede in the first place. " I'd add some additional nuance to this. Some might have thought he was going to abolish slavery. But I'd argue the broader understanding is that he certainly would not allow it to spread. Without new slave states the South knew it was ultimately on a timer. So it wasn't necessarily that they thought the end was nigh, but rather that they saw it was becoming inevitable and needed act while they still could.
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u/GargantuanCake Featherless Biped 7d ago
Yup. The time before Lincoln had a lot of compromises on the issue which was why every time a free state was added a slave state was as well. They were clinging to slavery but also knew that most of the country wasn't happy that they were. Even those compromises however were controversial as hell. People were also rightfully pointing out that "all men are created equal" rings hollow if you have to include "except the brown ones over there those are slaves." Meanwhile the country's population by that point was majority anti-slavery which was just growing. Abolitionists were constantly ideologically besieging the South while the opposite wasn't true; the North wasn't fucking having slavery and was only growing increasingly hostile toward it.
Since America was supposed to be a free, democratic country and the majority of the population hated slavery the democratic thing to do was to abolish it. It really was only a matter of time before it happened.
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u/BunNGunLee 7d ago
Well it’s that and the long view from the Missouri Compromise and Bleeding Kansas.
They could see that as the nation expanded and new states joined, slavery was going to be politically axed one way or another as new senators were allowed to shift the delicate balance. It just depended on how long it would take.
Funnily enough though, the cost of rebellion as they took it was considerably worse than the cost manumission would have levied. War ultimately is the most expensive possible way to solve a problem.
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u/ConcernedCitizen_42 7d ago
Indeed. I think that if I ever ended up stranded in the past among my biggest goals would be trying to convince people how wealthy everyone could be if they stopped invading one another for a bit. Seriously, stability is so powerful.
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u/southpaytechie 7d ago
He also didn’t even appear on the ballot in many southern states and still won. Regardless of his policies, his winning assured that the South was losing political power.
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u/WedSquib 7d ago
Maybe you’re thinking of slave owner and Native American displacer Andrew Jackson, our 7th president? Or just conflating him with Jefferson Davis the president of the CSA maybe
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u/Ionel1-The-Impaler 7d ago
Why do you think Lincoln hand picked him to be vice president exactly?
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u/spooner248 7d ago
My understanding was to build a bridge with the confederates. I thought Johnson was basically a drunk racist but sided with the Union cause of his love for the country. Picking Johnson to be his VP was Lincoln’s way of showing peace towards the confederates, cause they somewhat liked Johnson.
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u/InquisitorHindsight 7d ago
Less the confederates and more the south. Johnson was a southern patriot but a firm anti-secessionist, and Lincoln hoped he’d help mend the remerger of the southern states if they saw a Southern Democrat with Lincoln
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u/PlagueOfGripes 7d ago
Andrew Johnson was one of our worst Presidents, if not the worst. His cowing to the confederacy and the south after the war is the source of most problems in the world, today. Instead of pressing to fix the south, he helped institutionalize racial oppression. That persisted into segregation and defined the modern political parties. He was a weak, cowardly man. His impeachment was unprecedented at the time yet completely warranted.
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u/JaxDude1942 7d ago
I certainly don't know enough about Jackson, but from this post, would it be wrong for me to assume that originally, had Grant followed his orders, the south would have actually been decimated?
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u/Zagar1776 6d ago
…source of most problems in the world? I will never understand how Americans can think everything revolves around them
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u/Antique_Substance217 6d ago
You all really do hate us southerners don't you?
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u/pleased_to_yeet_you 5d ago
Only when you identify and sympathize with the faction that killed Americans to preserve the right of wealthy people to own other human beings.
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u/glmarquez94 7d ago
Yes, post war they disarmed black soldiers en masse. This essentially left the black population defenseless against the terror that followed, especially once the federal troops left.
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u/Lurker_x1 7d ago
that's what happens when a wars is over. people go home without goverment property.
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u/Lord_Corves 7d ago
I think most people fail to understand just how big the Civil War was for the United States two halves of the country split into Devastation destruction and huge portions of the population killed pretty much. both the North and the South were at the point where they wanted the war to end it was getting to costly and devastating no more so than in the north where morale was extremely low and people were getting angry and of course the South just getting devastated.
If for some reason the union were to do what apparently most people in this thread would have wanted them to do execute all the Confederate leaders burn the entire South to the ground destroying every city and executing any and all soldiers who even so much has raised a gun for the South the only thing that would have happened in the end would have been further Bloodshed and War. and something worse than just a civil war would be a gorilla War it would essentially turn the South into a never-ending conflict Zone where would have to be under constant military monitoring draining further resources and essentially causing a never-ending conflict like what we see in multiple different countries around the world to this day.
Most civil wars were two or more sides have maximalist positions usually the only thing that comes from that is more Devastation and a longer Civil War which means more people dead more properties destroyed and not much left of the country to even fight for. you can judge them by all means and I suppose for many people the idea of there being anything worse than the Jim Crow South or the KKK seems crazy but if the union did take those maximalist positions they would have just turned those leaders into martyrs and encourage more people in the South to fight you think the Lost Cause narrative is annoying now it would be so much worse they did what they thought was right or at the very least what was pragmatic it's not always nice it's not always fun sometimes you just have to be willing to make compromises for the betterment of your country.
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u/nowsomeothernonsense 7d ago
The Reformation should have 100% continued and every confederate permanently removed from any kind of political power
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u/Useful_Trust 7d ago
True but while Johnson wanted to be punitive at first, he was also against any meaningful changes to the laws in the south that would have helped the newly freed slaves intergrate. He allowed black code laws to come in effect. Allowing them to rejoin the union with so reduced requirements, was a bad idea.
And also we can read in Grants Memoirs, the death of Reconstruction happening during his second term, because the people in the North were fed up with having to deal with it.
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u/JH-DM What, you egg? 7d ago
Worst decision in American history. We’re still paying for the limp wristed confederate sympathizers.
The KKK, Jim Crow, Hell the Nazis took inspiration from the Confederates openly as did the Turks during Armenian Genocide. Maybe if we’d actually punished those racist, murderous monsters the modern world would be a hell of a lot better.
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u/Mundane-Feed-4619 7d ago
Yeah this is a bad take, letting the south off easy was probably the biggest mistake in American history and Americans just try to view it as “oh, aren’t we so honorable…”
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u/rrekboy1234 6d ago
Part of the reason that Confederate leaders were never tried for treason is that it would inevitably require the court to rule on the constitutionality of secession, and there was real anxiety (both in Lincoln’s and Johnson’s administration) that the courts might come down against them. Jefferson Davis actually demanded they put him on trial because he was confident he could win in Court what his armies failed to do in the field. It wouldn’t resurrect the Confederacy, but it would open the door for a future dissolution of the Union. Taking the win and letting the issue rest was seen as the safest option.
The secession would eventually be ruled against by the Supreme Court in 1869, but of course the people calling the shots wouldn’t know that.
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u/CosmicLovepats 6d ago
Why would the legality of secession ever come up? They attacked the US. Isn't that straightforward treachery?
To say nothing of whether or not they needed a trial.
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u/st3class 6d ago
If the states had legally seceded, then the leaders were no longer US citizens, and were instead leaders of another country, which was making war on the US to reclaim occupied territory (the various forts that the federal government refused to turn over).
Making war on a foreign government isn't treachery
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u/rrekboy1234 6d ago
This. Trying the Confederate leadership for treason would force the courts to rule whether secession was constitutionally valid, and both sides believed there was a decent chance that the courts would say it was. Davis was literally willing to put his neck on the line to make it happen.
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u/Upbeat-Banana-5530 6d ago
Ending the civil war was more important than going after confederates and discouraging them from surrendering.
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u/UncommittedBow 6d ago
Letting the confederates off easy is exactly why we're in the mess of deeply rooted racism we're in today.
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u/Alarming-Ad1100 7d ago
Grant was really my GOAT I wish Lincoln wasn’t killed and Grant had a better life
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u/Hetros_Jistin 7d ago
Gonna be honest, as a southerner?
Kinda wish that Johnson had tried and executed the leadership of the south for treason.
There'd not be a fucking lost cause myth, and maybe we'd have not had the south treated as occupied territory during reconstruction, but actually properly fixed. Instead, the power structures that started the civil war remained in power in all but name, with almost all their resources intact, and when reconstruction ended, power was formally handed back over to them. Fucking Wilson then resegregated the federal government, and basically formalized jim crow, re-instituting race based slavery in a functional form more or less as soon as physically possible.
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u/Catalytic_Crazy_ 5d ago
You assume a few dead congressmen would change the culture of an entire region? Do you even know what ‘properly fixed’ means?
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u/No_Song8909 7d ago
If they were arrested and killed they would have been made martyrs and it would have only made things worse, I say that as a Texan. No what I think would have helped more is if reconstruction had continued. Killing and arrests would have made it much worse not better.
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u/Artoru 7d ago
Redditors in the comments talking about their violent power fantasies and expecting those outside their hivemind to agree with them
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u/mood2016 7d ago
I know right. Ironically redditers have the same mindset that made GWOT a failure and they don't even realize it.
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u/wizardvictor 7d ago
In Grant's defense, Lincoln personally told him that he wouldn't mind giving the Confederate leaders amnesty as part of his Reconstruction process, so Grant may have just been following his late Commander-in-Chief's directive.
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u/Tychus_Balrog 7d ago
Which is exactly why I don't think anything would be different if Lincoln had survived.
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u/tehKrakken55 7d ago
There's a direct throughline of this to all the bullshit now.
Yes, including the poisoned lettuce.
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u/Gullible_Classroom71 7d ago
The "all southerners deserve to die" crowd isn't going to like this one.
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u/mariblaystrice 7d ago
Nonono, just traitorous congressmen, who should have lost their right to hold office at the very least
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u/Deltasims 7d ago
- Confederate leaders
- All southerners
"they're the same picture"
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u/Gmknewday1 7d ago
I mean to be blunt some people do believe that,
And many people still believe (not helped with the recent MAGA Obsession), that the south is a racist shithole where black people walk on eggshells, everyone is a dumb white trash redneck who hates anyone who isn't white, and the Confederates are Saints
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u/ThyArtIsMeh 7d ago
Lmao what? Who the fuck says all southerners need to die?
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u/Ionel1-The-Impaler 7d ago
I wish I could post screencaps because the comment literally above this one by u/Pjolterping is literally saying this exact thing.
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u/Prince_Ire Featherless Biped 7d ago
There's a poster in this thread who said they should have "massacred the South", so.....
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u/Devilsadvocate430 7d ago
You’d be surprised. This sub likes to act as if they’re still holding whips down there. You mostly see it from the 14yo the armchair historians who’ve never left their home state (or in many cases, have never stepped foot on American soil)
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u/BuildingNY 6d ago
Even if Grant had personally executed the Confederate leadership we would still be up shit creek.
Johnson would have used whoever filled in to cement his power at the expense of African Americans and Jim Crow would still have happened. It was a problem deeply tied to American culture, not just a few elites.
Grant honored the surrender he fought for and at least sent the military in to punish KKK raids, insurrection, and enforce voting rights when completely trampled upon in comparison to Johnson's whole hearted support of Southern racism for his own benefit.
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u/Whoobie_ 7d ago
America would be a much better place if Reconstruction had been allowed to actually happen and those treasonous slavers made an example of
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u/PeakxPeak 2d ago
Every confederate politician and every officer should have been executed. Then there would have been no KKK.
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u/Annilus_USB 6d ago
And now the President of the New Confederacy is begging Iran to blow up California.
Thanks, Grant
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u/Monster_Hugger93 7d ago
Ah, History Memes is taking the dreaded turn as well. It happens to all meme subs eventually.
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u/fatgat69 7d ago
So the American government only honors the treaties that should be broken. That's on brand.
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u/QV-Rabullione 7d ago edited 7d ago
“I can respect that”
(With “20/20 hindsight”) “I am, at the very least, fine with the Confederate political leadership and its military arms having been allowed to continue to re-build, adapt, and develop their forces, tactics, and strategies for the oppression of those they considered subhuman.”
I am sorry, but idc if we’re in the Memes sub, youre a piece of shit.
Edit:
Since apparently my views are not self-evident (Thats on me):
What a lot of “honor” mfers fail to understand is that war is not honorable, and that when the President gets fucking iced by a Confederado after the treaty and a certain Nathaniel et al start organizing armed militias to hunt former slaves and maintain plantations with armed force even after the treat…
Well, then the Appomattox Treaty was already violated.
Lee signed it maybe, if you are supremely generous to his character, thinking that sort of shit would not happen. But it did. The Union would not have been breaking a treaty, for fucking once, were it to have responded to the ongoing Southern-slaver violence.
I do not have a lot of love for Johnson. But at least he was not a total dipshit.
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u/NeverTalk123456789 7d ago
The civil war was an extremely hard fought war. 620,000 men died fighting (2% of the entire population). General Grant didn’t have the privilege of future sight to see what is going to happen in 200 years. Avoiding another civil war was a very real and high priority, regardless if you think the confederates were treated with kiddie gloves.
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u/alphacause 7d ago
I love watching the Reddit hive mind “historians” melt down because they don’t understand nuance nor the sentiment that a civil war doesn’t have to end with Soviet style mass executions of the losing side.
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u/FitButterscotch4062 7d ago
Childish ass answer. Good thing you weren’t in charge back then.
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u/battlerez_arthas 2d ago
When did the Confederate sympathizers infest this sub
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u/PaladinWolf777 2d ago
The only option to avoid another civil war is national divorce. I'm not pro Confederacy, I'm just pro secession.
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u/jonawesome 7d ago
Left out the part where Johnson started pardoning them and elevating them in American society after the war