The Volokh Conspiracy
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Today in Supreme Court History: August 20, 1866
8/20/1866: President Andrew Johnson proclaims an "end to insurrection in the United States."
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The proclamation had been on his desk for quite some time, but only on August 20 of 1866 had Andrew sobered up enough to sign it.
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/may-29-1865-proclamation-pardoning-persons-who-participated
And pretty much all the insurrectionists who survived the war were pardoned and went on with their lives. There were no Congressional hearings, no trials for every individual who trespassed on Federal property, No withdrawal of or limitation to their rights as citizens.
The result: the return of slavery in the South, in all but name.
And 150 years of perennially having:
Highest unemployment rates
Highest infant mortality rates
Highest homeless rates
Lowest levels of education
Lowest income levels
Just about any socio-economic data point shows the rebel states are at the bad end.
All which continue to this day.
That list is just racist, because they have the largest fractions of the population black, and underperforming due to high rates of bastardy. The lawyer profession is 100% the cause of the high bastardy rate.
The ten states with the highest white household poverty rates:
1. West Virginia
2. Kentucky
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Oklahoma
6. Mississippi
7. Alabama
8. New Mexico
9. Tennessee
10. Missouri
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22White%22,%22sort%22:%22desc%22%7D
Only 6 were in the Confederacy, neither of the top 2.
Oh, I see other commonalities.
*Only* sixty percent from one region, lol?
Also, the Confederacy actually recognized Kentucky and Missouri as part of their slavery-pushing jamboree, so it’s more like 8 out of 10.
Nice try Bob, Ohio would be proud.
West Virginia was a Unionist state – that’s how it was created. Yet it’s poorer than “secessionist” Virginia.
Oklahoma was considered “Indian territory.”
Oh, and visiting a “nawthern” state, one thing I noticed was the cost of living – does that factor into the poverty rate?
Cal….Were you expecting something more than a rudimentary knowledge of American history?! 🙂
Poverty rates involve a simple arithmetic error from the third grade. The lawyer dumbass running the Census Bureau forgot to add the value of welfare, $65000, to the income of the pseudo-poor. Fucking morons made a third grad math error. I thought the fucking lawyer math went to fourth grade, that needed to count money.
I usually do not curse. Please, excuse my cursing. I am trying to sound woke.
W.Va. is red; Virginia is blue. Oklahoma is red.
These are the “commonalities” Krychek was referring to.
From my experience you’re *much* more likely to come across a Confederate flag in W. Virginia than you are the Old Dominion, ironic as that is…
“West Virginia was a Unionist state – that’s how it was created. Yet it’s poorer than “secessionist” Virginia.”
And while 9 out of 10 men are stronger than women this means one can’t say men generally are stronger than women, because there’s that 1, amirite?
The stink of Democrat policies takes a loooooooooong time to get rid of.
Lol, a truly protean effort.
“Just about any socio-economic data point shows the rebel states are at the bad end.”
God [not Andrew Johnson] made the humid South poor, John Carrier rescued it.
What a gloriously funny own goal, for the reasons the good capt gives (among others).
“The result: the return of slavery in the South, in all but name.”
The mercy toward the defeated had noting to do with that.
Could have executed thousands and still had Jim Crow.
Reconstruction could have gone a lot of different ways – I don’t think one can argue Jim Crow was inevitable at all.
“Jim Crow was inevitable ”
Point taken, but hanging lots of Confederates wasn’t going to stop it.
Sooner or later the Army would have been withdrawn, it the actions taken/not taken at that point that would have been important.
Jim Crow was put into place by the ex-Confederates who were in office after Reconstruction due to never having been punished/pardoned/banned from office. The slaveowning ruling class was back in power.
The slaveowning ruling class was largely killed off or impoverished.
Most post war southern leaders were middle class white lawyers/merchants. Lots of which were in the Reb army of course but were not from ex-slave owning families.
You are just engaged in historic revisionism from a safe 150 year distance.
Some military occupations do indeed change recalcitrant movements, see Japan and Germany.
At least as far as Presidential Reconstruction goes, amnesty for hardcore Confederates strikes me as secondary to the main issue: a widespread unwillingness by Unionists, even in supposedly sympathetic institutions like the Freedman’s Bureau, to actually drastically change the Southern order going forward and a privileging of the concerns of southern (and northern) whites over the concerns of the recently freed slaves.
That’s my point.
It was the unwillingness of the rest of the country to do what was necessary, not whether we hung people or not, that let Jim Crow happen.
Bob from Ohio, you make an unappreciated historical point. To be fair, by 1876, the country was exhausted with Reconstruction, and had had enough of sending/stationing troops to occupy the South.
The problem I see here is one of presentism. And presentism is ahistorical.
I’m not sure what you think your point is here. People aren’t so much blaming the North for not policing the South better, they’re lamenting the South’s tendencies.
All of the force/government in the world cannot change the human heart — 100 years is a hell of a long time to wait, but change is slow.
That is true, DWB. And change is hard.
It’s 2021 and the Democrat party still maintains its power flaming racial hatred. Sadly, some things never change.
This is like people who say that shooting a guy in self defense and shooting a guy because you don’t like how he looks is the same (hey, they’re both shootings!).
1) Democratic Party
2) Weird that the party is overall way more racially diverse than Republicans. For being such racists you’d think that wouldn’t happen.
1) Democrat party
2) Black people are the most racist people in the country (even they admit it in polls) and my 30 years of being married to black women I can confirm.) Hating your neighbor is not limited to light skin color silly.
(https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/07/03/poll-finds-black-americans-more-likely-to-be-seen-as-racist)
TMI
Bigoted, superstitious, ignorant, can’t-keep-up, Confederacy-friendly conservatives are among my favorite culture war casualties.
But enough about your Daddy’s friend Joe … racial jungles scare you too little boy?
Sometimes, the past is not even past.
Blacks did well, without affirmative action, in the Reconstruction. The Army hanged KKK lawyers, and settled the white population down. This is a good model for today.
When you hang a lawyer, things improve.
Stupid (“without affirmative action, in the Reconstruction” is especially funny), authoritarian nut here. Trumpista too, of course.
So, wait 16 months before declaring an insurrection at an end?
According to the first post it had sat on is office ‘quite some time.’ Would be interested in knowing more about that.
I also imagine it would be hard to declare insurrections for sure ‘done’ given communications and organizations networks were relatively slow back then.
I was making an Andrew Johnson drunk joke. I really don’t know how long it had been on his desk.
Though maybe I conceded too much when I said he was sober when he signed it. I can picture him staggering into the Oval Office, trying to focus his bleary eyes, seeing three identical documents on his desk, and his secretary saying, “Sign the one in the middle, Mr. President.”
Upon reading the entire thing (ugh) it seems they were waiting on Texas (surprise!) to declare the insurrection entirely over.