What if the US Government had, in early 1865, had intimated to the confederacy and the world at large that there would not be a blanket pardon with exceptions for a few especially heinous or high-ranking offenders, but rather a more standard policy where at least all former US officers and officials would be punishable to the full extent of the law. Never mind the lack of political will for something like this, the fact that it might adversely affect Union morale, or the potentially deleterious long-term consequences Would such a policy, given almost certain increased Confederate resistance, have been militarily feasible to implement?
Would a "No Automatic Amnesty" Confederate Surrender Have Been Feasible?
- Thread starter frustrated progressive
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Meh. It's not really the war that would be affected by this- the aftermath of the war would be much more bloody, with much more intense guerrilla warfare due to making martyrs out of people.
Skallagrim
Banned
It's feasible in the short term, and will then turn into a whole bloody mess that makes Reconstruction utterly stillborn from the start, only worsens all sorts of animosity, and eventually sees an end to the period of military occupation when the North is no longer willing to throw money and lives down the hole. And then you get a long period of unreconstructed Southerners running their own states, feeling hateful towards the North. The wounds of the Union become far, far deeper and turn into scars that will never fade.
Which is exactly why nobody sane wanted to carry out this kind of policy. The whole reason for fighting the war was to bring the Union back together. That goal, in itself, meant that the strategy had to be "defeat them on the field, and then embrace them as brothers who have erred but are now forgiven".
Which is exactly why nobody sane wanted to carry out this kind of policy. The whole reason for fighting the war was to bring the Union back together. That goal, in itself, meant that the strategy had to be "defeat them on the field, and then embrace them as brothers who have erred but are now forgiven".
If this happens before the surrender of the major Confederate armies in 1865, I imagine this would probably delay surrender, though probably not by much given the state of the CSA by that point, as this was one of the major fears of many high-ranking Confederate officials.
Count your blessings.
If the slaveocrats hadn't lapsed into insanity and started the ACW, you wouldn't even have got emancipation until decades later than OTL.
Skallagrim
Banned
This isn't a Reconstruction thread. This is more a Deconstruction thread. There are some idiots who think that "vengeance" is a solid basis for post-war settlements, but if you want effective Reconstruction, the first rule is that you must at once stop thinking about how it can be made worse for anyone at all (even for the most evil bastards), and focus exclusively on making things better.
To be clear, I don’t mean “worse” in the sense of “wreaking bloody vengeance on anyone who ever held a slave”, just in the sense of “they don’t immediately retake power once the whole thing is over and instantly reverse all the gains that were made”.
Executing all the senior Confederates for treason would almost certainly have been worse for the Southern slaveocracy. It's just that it would have been worse for pretty much everybody else, as well.
Lucius Verus
Banned
The gains weren't emancipation or black rights, but rather nationalism and unity of the nation. Only in retrospect does it seem like a failure.
Except black political rights were secured for decades after the Civil War, and it was entirely decisions by federal authorities that allowed them those rights to be revoked. It's rather odd that practically all threads regarding Reconstruction view it as inevitable that Jim Crow is established and Republican leadership betray their black constituents.
Just to clarify, again: I know full well that it'd wouldn't be good in the long-term for anyone involved, just whether we made enough soldiers to do it, which seems to be an affirmative.
I don’t think it failed, since its main objective was reintegrating Southern states into the Union and it was highly successful in that regard, but that hardly keeps me from feeling that Southern blacks got a horribly raw deal in the process.
Isn't that a bit like saying that George III "betrayed" the American loyalists by accepting US independence after Yorktown?
He had no choice, having lost the war. It was much the same for the Republicans in 1877. Nine out of eleven Confederate States had already been "redeemed" even before Federal troops left, and the two survivors were hanging on by their fingernails and clearly not long for this world. And given the mood of Northern voters, any serious attempt to do anything about it would just lead to electoral defeat.
History Learner
Banned
Then Confederate forces in the field keep fighting into the Spring of 1866, and thereafter the conflict turns into a bushwacking one that ultimately the North losses the will to fight within a few years.
I honestly think that, once l the conventional confederate military is broken, the union will methodically and simply grind down guerrilla resistance until it's no longer viable.
History Learner
Banned
They didn't IOTL given the limited nature of the Klan and other groups; as @Mikestone8 noted, by 1876 the North was tired of dealing with "Autumnal Outbreaks". Now imagine an actual resistance fighting in the memory of Lee and others with many of its members having nothing to loose as opposed to IOTL when cooperation promised things could largely go back to normal.
However, IOTL the north could retire having achieved most of its objectives: union preserved, southern primacy on national political power broken, chattel slavery abolished. Here they would be walking away with none of those, and considering that guerrilla movements rarely succeed except with powerful foreign backing, I don't think the odds are in the south's favor militarily either.
History Learner
Banned
By April of 1865 all of those conditions have been met and leaving the war goals at that was sufficient to prevent the outbreak of insurgency; the leniency of Grant and Sherman also greatly expedited the process of restoring the Union. Herein, you've proposed the Union adopts a much more aggressive policy of attempting to remake the South when the North IOTL didn't have the stomach to deal with minor fighting within a few years of the conclusion of the conflict. IOTL they were content to let Reconstruction be a failure and I see no reason they wouldn't do the same here, especially given IOTL efforts to hang Jeff Davis were enough to get Abolitionists and even Radical Republicans rising in his defense.