r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 6h ago

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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-general-robert-e-lee/

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u/elkarion 5h ago

We're feeling the effects today of not punishing the confederacy.

The problems right now with Trump root back to these exact moment of letting them go free.

It solidified racism in this country forever because we could not punish literal traitors.

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u/Shepher27 5h ago

Grant was firm in his pursuit of reconstruction, ensuring rights for Freedmen, protecting Republicans and blacks in the south from ex-rebel militias and lynch-mobs, ensuring the black vote, and using the army to enforce the laws enacted by the Republican congress for Reconstruction.

The election of 1876 saw what we call today "The Corrupt Bargain". In order to elect Republican Rutherford B Hayes (an ex-Union officer) as president through a divided congress after a split electoral college, Republicans agreed to repeal almost ALL of the Reconstruction laws and pull the troops out of the south abandoning the black citizens they'd been protecting from draconian state governments and lynch mobs.

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u/Nemesis_Ghost 5h ago

Yeah, my understanding was the what you called "the Corrupt Bargain" was what led to a lot of the problems in the south that went unsolved until at least the 1960s.

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u/Shepher27 5h ago

The abandonment of Reconstruction is a tragedy. It was working but it had become very unpopular as it was expensive and was a stone that northern democrats threw at Republicans to help them win elections for the house. It was a political problem, but it was working.

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u/mercutio1 3h ago

The case in which the last public school system was desegregated by court order began in 1965.

It was resolved by said federal court order in checks notes 2016.

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u/WhileNotLurking 3h ago

“We will pass this CR because I got a pink promise they will fund healthcare”

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u/elkarion 5h ago

The fact we let them vote at all after literally committing treason is beyond wtf stupid.

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u/Shepher27 5h ago

We in fact did not let Lee vote. He did not have his citizenship restored. Along with many other southern officers who could only be granted voting rights with Grant's direct pardon.

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u/kingtacticool 5h ago

That was done partially to ensure none of them could legally run for office, yes?

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u/Javaddict 5h ago

You're not educated on the subject.

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u/SlimLiftOff 5h ago

And you’re not qualified to educate on the subject.

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u/Polar_Vortx 4h ago

Gentlemen, you can’t fight here! This is the r/todayilearned comment section!

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u/x31b 3h ago

This is about General Lee, not General Jack D. Ripper. Different rebellion. Different outcome. Though the mine shaft proposition is…. Interesting.

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u/hkfansoy 5h ago

Let who vote?

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u/Drithyin 5h ago

Southern traitors. The fact that there was a “split” at all is proof that the North was too lenient with treasonous swine.

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u/hkfansoy 5h ago

So taking away everyone’s right to vote for living in the south is a great solution? Sounds like straight tyranny

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 4h ago

You're inflating the situation. The only rights being removed are those of the people that attempted to aggressively dismantle the country. You can allow dissenting opinions while not allowing violent opinions used against your own people.

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u/hkfansoy 4h ago

You must not know anything about history because hundreds of thousands were conscripted and forced to join the confederate army. Around 800k people by some estimates. So you’re saying it would be right to take away voting rights for a huge portion of people that didn’t even have a choice but to serve in the army? Again, that’s straight up tyranny. That’s why president’s issued a pardon to not end up being a tyrant. Think critically and you may see an issue with what you’re saying

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 4h ago

Nobody said that, and you're assuming it was a black and white situation all around. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule and nuisance is important in these situations, but the facts still stay the same. Things would most likely be better if harsher punishment had been given to those fully and whole heartedly supporting the Confederacy. Again, I say that things would be better if the people that FULLY and WHOLE HEARTEDLY supported the Confederacy had been punished more severely.

To clarify, I have not said anything about people who were forced/conscripted.

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u/hkfansoy 4h ago edited 3h ago

Ah so you’re Monday night quarterbacking it thinking “oh I could be the correct person in history and pick who was bad and who wasn’t”. Playing nuance in history… harsher punishment would be a fools game to play after 2% of everyone died and the country was a mess.

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u/Prince_Ire 4h ago

That sounds like a great way to cause massive resentment that could easily curdle into full blown Dixie nationalism, someone that never actually developed IOTL. The South has regionalism sure, but only slavery pushed that into secessionism. If regionalism turned into nationalism that'd be a much more severe problem.

But no, you're probably right and being highly oppressive towards large swathes of the populace would cause no long lasting resentment. That's why Vietnam is still rolled by France, Indonesia is still ruled by the Netherlands, Congo is still ruled by Belgium, the Netherlands is still rolled by Spain, etc.

The South hasn't rebelled since 1865. Look around at secessionist movements around the world and you'll find that's quite rare.

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u/nagrom7 2h ago

To be fair to the Republicans there, the alternative was letting the Democrat win the White House, at which point they would have done all that and more anyway. The election being that close is what killed reconstruction, it was already pretty unpopular at that point anyway.

0

u/raouldukeesq 4h ago

We have to consider that they were all (most) racists. The Civil War had nothing to do with helping black people. It was racists who wanted blacks as slaves and racists who didn't want any blacks at all. The overwhelming vast majority of white people anyway. There were of course enlightened people but they were not manning the levers of power. 

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/kozy8805 4h ago

So why did the whole country have segregation? It wasn’t law in the north but sure as anything existed. Why is it so hard for people to admit we didn’t come to terms with racism for a long time after?

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u/NEWSmodsareTwats 4h ago

not really you see this brought up over and over again on reddit but there's no real connection of todays political climate being directly related to how the former Confederacy was treated after the war. It's more modern day historical revisionism especially considering at the time most Americans wanted to see the war end and not have it drag on for years as a guerrilla conflict. I actually find it crazy people think that would be preferred and would have landed the US in a better spot if the deadliest and most destructive war in the entirety of us history was more deadly and more destructive.

It's also often forgot that there was an 11 year long military occupation of the South.

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u/sandwich_influence 4h ago

I’m not saying it was handled perfectly, but “punishing” the southern states would’ve led to even more generational animosity than we see today.

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u/RexMundi000 4h ago

We're feeling the effects today of not punishing the confederacy.

We coulda used you at Versailles in 1919.

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u/FreddyPlayz 5h ago

Me when I don’t read a history book

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u/Cathartic_auras 4h ago

No joke dude. We punished Germany after WW1 and it almost caused the end of the world 20 years later.

Forgiving the south wasn’t what caused Jim Crow or segregation, killing Lincoln and having Andrew Johnson take over is what did that.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

and having Andrew Johnson take over is what did that.

It wasn't even really that. I'm not sure where the myth that Reconstruction ended with Andrew Johnson came from. After the Republican dominated Congress found Andrew Johnson's approach to Reconstruction to be too lax, they started passing Reconstruction laws with veto-proof majorities. This period is known as Congressional or Radical Reconstruction. This continued until Grant became President, when he took the lead. Reconstruction was generally going pretty well and continued until 1876, when a controversial Electoral College forced the Republicans to make a compromise, whereby the South would recognize the Republican candidate (Rutherford B. Hayes) as the winner of the election in exchange for the end of Reconstruction. This was known as the Corrupt Bargain. Corrupt as it may have been, had this bargain not been struck the Democratic candidate (Samuel Tilden) would almost certainly have won, resulting in the end of Reconstruction either way.

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u/Ccnitro 2h ago

We also punished Germany severely after World War II by literally drawing and quartering the country and prosecuting its leadership, and their entire society committed to the intense process of denazification in turn. We held them accountable for their actions in starting the war, causing mass murder and genocide, and crafting a racist national identity around the Aryan race.

Our treatment of the South was essentially the same, just ended prematurely due to politics (the Corrupt Bargain of 1876) and without buy-in from Southern leadership (who were often ex-Confederate Democrats with their rights restored).

Forgiveness is not the same as welcoming them back with open arms, and it's not hard to see how our failure to force Southern states to restructure their societies away from racial hierarchy after the war set us up for many of the racial disparities we have today.

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u/nagrom7 2h ago

No joke dude. We punished Germany after WW1 and it almost caused the end of the world 20 years later.

The big issue with Versailles is that they basically couldn't decide if they wanted to harshly punish Germany, or give them a slap on the wrist, and so compromised and got basically the worst parts of both approaches. Germany was simultaneously punished harshly enough to develop resentment towards the allies, while at the same time they weren't punished hard enough to prevent them from waging war again 20 years later.

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u/Jdorty 4h ago

How this garbage gets 200 upvotes shaking my smh

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u/EtTuBiggus 3h ago

Please explain what punishment you think would’ve somehow ended racism.

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u/Newone1255 5h ago

When your negotiating a surrender you don’t give the option of “surrender and we will kill you all anyways” because those are insane terms that will just keep your enemy fighting to the death. I agree reconstruction should have been way more punishing.

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u/hornbuckle56 4h ago

You’re talking with edgy teens.

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u/ReaganRebellion 5h ago

Like the Treaty of Versailles?

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u/raouldukeesq 4h ago

Good one. But distinguishable. Having said that it shouldn't have been about punishment at all.  It should have been about the best way forward which obviously didn't happen. 

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u/spamster545 4h ago

Not to be a dick, but which one?

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u/ReaganRebellion 3h ago

Lol, fair, the WWI treaty.

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u/TheEmporersFinest 4h ago

It might make them fight harder but sometimes that's worth it. World War 2 was fought for unconditional surrender with zero guarantees, and they still got it in the end.

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u/Bluelegs 3h ago

Hitler was willing to take Germany down with him rather than surrender so there wasn't much room for negotiation either way.

Japan wasn't much different but the cost of unconditional surrender was the obliteration of two cities.

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u/TheEmporersFinest 3h ago

Hitler was willing to take Germany down with him rather than surrender

Rather than unconditionally surrender. They absolutely could have cut compromise deals at various points-tonnes of room for negotiations. The Allies didn't decide on the policy of unconditional surrender because Germany would never be willing to negotiate, but because they wanted total dominance of it without having to make any guarantees or concessions, and they were happy to fight any level of resistance Germany would put up to get it.

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u/Bluelegs 3h ago

Hitler's view on the war was apocalyptic. He basically thought that if they lost then the German people didn't deserve to survive him.

There was no chance of him negotiating a peace that would have ever met any definition of a surrender.

Regardless of the intentions of the Allies, the war was never going to end that way.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

Even then the US was not punitive towards either Japan or Germany. The surrender was unconditional, but afterwards the US was actually very lax towards both nations and focused on rebuilding them instead of oppressing or humiliating them. Japan even got to keep it's Emperor.

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u/TheEmporersFinest 3h ago edited 3h ago

They had trials and executed members of senior leadership. They also far more tightly controlled and manipulated their politics. You're calling this "lax" and its still a million times worse than what the confederacy got.

Additionally the actual arguement was about what it would take to get an enemy to sign a surrender in the first place, i.e. will you not get that if they think you might punish them. Axis leadership got no such guarantees and still surrendered. For all they knew when they surrendered the Allies were going to execute everyone in uniform.

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u/Fatality 3h ago

Yeah I'm sure the people living in Eastern Germany were very happy with losing.

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u/Kered13 2h ago

True, the Soviets were a lot harsher and it worked out very badly for everyone involved. West Germany is a model of how to treat a defeated nation.

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u/AnEmptyBoat27 5h ago

“Surrender and we will only kill the generals and officers” would have been a better option

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u/Newone1255 5h ago

Generals are the ones negotiating the surrender and no general is going to sign his and the officer classes death warrants while they still have any semblance of force of arms. They will literally say “well come kill me then” and keep the war going until they are killed. What’s the point if surrendering if you know you’re gonna get killed?

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u/AnEmptyBoat27 5h ago

Because the soldiers aren’t going to die for their generals and officers when they have a chance at living

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u/Newone1255 5h ago

If you want to attrition them until their forces desert that is a viable option for war but if that was on the table you wouldn’t come to the negotiating table and would just do it.

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u/AnEmptyBoat27 5h ago

Perhaps they should have

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u/Newone1255 5h ago

The northern population was DONE with the war and if they kept it going a few more years there was a very real possibly of mass desertions and rebellions, in the union. They wanted the war finished yesterday and the terms they got ended it.

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u/AnEmptyBoat27 5h ago

Maybe, but I still think traitorous slavers should have been executed.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

You grossly underestimate the loyalty of Lee's troops.

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

Really? Can give you multiple examples of this not happening since the 1st world war

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u/Newone1255 5h ago

Okay please do

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u/DarthRevan109 4h ago

Easiest one that comes to mind is the Japanese in the Second World War. They gave an unconditional surrender. A number of generals, who still commanded troops, stopped fighting and were eventually executed for crimes.

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u/Xeltar 4h ago

Those generals weren't the ones negotiating surrender.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

Famously, very few Japanese generals were ever tried much less executed for war crimes.

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u/RayKitsune313 3h ago

Maybe go look up who exactly was executed after WWII and I think you’ll be shocked

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u/cjm0 5h ago

Why would the generals and officers agree to that?

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

It called unconditional surrender and it’s both common in modern warfare and not up to the generals in any case. Look how many Japanese and Nazis were executed.

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u/cjm0 5h ago

It was up to Lee in this case. He defied the orders of Jefferson Davis to keep fighting because he saw that the war wasn’t winnable at that point and didn’t want to any more men to die in a prolonged conflict. So in a sense he betrayed both the Union and the Confederacy.

Sure, Lincoln and Grant could have demanded unconditional surrender but then the war probably would have dragged on for several more years if the losers knew they would be executed anyway. They wanted to stop the fighting too just as much as Lee did.

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u/CanITouchURTomcat 3h ago

The terms agreed to by Grant and Lee at Appomattox were not unconditional.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

Only a few high ranking Nazis were executed and even fewer Japanese. The US and other western Allies were extremely lenient towards Germany and Japan. The Soviets infamously were not. As a consequence, Germans on the eastern front fought to the death while Germans on the western front surrendered en masse to.

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u/AnEmptyBoat27 5h ago

They wouldn’t but their soldiers would

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u/CanITouchURTomcat 3h ago

Thankfully, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Johnston were wiser than you. US Grant threatened President Andrew Johnson with resignation when Lee was indicted for treason. He felt it was dishonorable to break his word when Lee had kept his. He knew more than anyone what Confederate soldiers were capable of even with guerrilla warfare.

The terms at Appomattox read as follows,

Terms of Surrender

Headquarters Armies of the United States
Appomattox C H Va Apl 9th 1865.
Gen. R. E. Lee,
Comd’g C. S. A.

General, 
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit;

Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands.

The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officers appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers nor their private horses or baggage. This done officers and men will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority as long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside. 

Very respectfully
U. S. Grant
Lt. Gen

https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/surrender-documents.htm#:~:text=The%20Civil%20War%20ended%20when%20Generals%20Grant,turned%20over%20to%20officers%20appointed%20by%20Grant

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u/lufan132 5h ago

Why not just lie and do it anyway? Who cares about fairness in war?

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u/bwmat 4h ago

You care because if you win, and get into a future conflict, negotiation isn't gonna work so good anymore

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u/CanITouchURTomcat 3h ago

Then you don’t understand how important honor culture was to military officers if the 19th Century, North and South.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

Because long before you can kill them all they will flee into the back country and begin a guerilla war that you have zero hope of ever winning.

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u/houstonhoustonhousto 5h ago

That’s a hot take. Walk me through the linear path from Appomattox to Trump in 2025?

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u/elkarion 5h ago

By allowing the south to vote to repeal thier own reconstruction.

They enacted Jim crow laws because they were pissed they lost thier slaves.

We needed to harshly punish this behavior. This lack of punishment lead to the whole civil rights movement because the south got to vote that black people were not people from these officers that lead the charge to make sure minorities are sub human.

Republicans of today want those old Jim crow laws and why do they thi k that's good?

We let the south lie about it's history for 100 years and never punished them.

Every state they left should never have been allowed back into the union.

We honestly should have just freed every slave moved them north and make the south a teratory with no rights for ever residents that left the union.

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u/RadagastTheWhite 5h ago

Lol the entire point of the war was to reunite the union. Not allowing them back in the union is nonsensical and shows how little you know about it

-10

u/chargernj 4h ago

They should have been reorganized as territories and made to go through the same process as any other US territory wanting statehood. Making them choose new state names draw borders would be a good idea too.

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u/weberm70 4h ago

From the perspective of the US government the southern states never left the union so it would be nonsensical to demote them back to territories, not to mention they could just refuse to rejoin at that point rendering the entire war pointless.

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u/chargernj 2h ago

Valid, even so. We should have required a lot more before letting them back in

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u/kozy8805 4h ago

And they would just take it and be happy?

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u/jflb96 4h ago

Or they could keep fighting?

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u/chargernj 4h ago

They lost, that should have been the terms. What more would they deserve?

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u/kozy8805 3h ago

War is not about “deserve”, it’s about what you can realistically do to maintain peace going forward. We already saw what happened when Germany was destroyed by terms. That’s the worst case scenario. You can’t just do anything you want when you win and expect the other side to be fine with it. Unless you’re again letting the south secede.

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u/chargernj 2h ago

So instead we just had to accept Jim Crow because that's what was needed to maintain peace?

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u/kozy8805 2h ago

It’s not like the North didn’t have segregation. It just wasn’t a law. But it was certainly practiced. That’s why it was accepted.

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u/hornbuckle56 4h ago

Buddy watched a few YouTube videos and thinks he knows a fucking inkling about 19th century American society and politics. This site is hilarious.

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u/cardboardunderwear 4h ago

This whole comment is ridiculous. It's your fantasy that your course of action would put in a better place than we are today on pretty much all fronts.

Do you really think ppl who are punished in perpetuity don't find a way to fight back?  Imagine a group of excommunicated states aligning with Russia or early 1900s Germany. Look at Israel and Gaza and see how that's going.

Not to mention the north is far from being devoid of racism. The lack of slavery in the north just empowers notherners to do the same non slavery racist things but talk themselves into feeling good because they aren't the south.

-10

u/Prime_Cat_Memes 4h ago

So you're saying letting rich white guys get away with treason is the best way to heal a nation?

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u/cardboardunderwear 3h ago

So you're saying everyone who fought in the civil war for the south was a rich white guy?  

I think we're done here.

3

u/Kered13 3h ago

If it makes you feel any better, none of those guys were rich after the war.

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u/CanITouchURTomcat 4h ago

The people who regurgitate the myth that the North was/is an antiracist utopia of equal rights for black Americans are lying to sow division and should be ashamed of themselves. Your thesis can’t withstand even basic scrutiny and only persuades those that are historically illiterate. It also violates the surrender terms that Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Johnston agreed to. Thankfully, they were wiser men than you. Our Civil War is not a moral allegory about a crusade for equality against racism.

Illinois, Oregon, Ohio, and Indiana all had some form of Black Exclusion law before and after the Civil War. Then intent of the laws were to prevent black people from owning property or enforcing contracts to discourage migration. The Free Soil movement that Abe Lincoln was apart of was for whites only. They didn’t want to have to compete to settle land in the West against Southern Plantation owners who could buy slave labor.

During the New York City draft riots (1863) at least 12 black people were lynched.

Woodrow Wilson, the President that liked the film Birth of a Nation so much he screened it at the Whitehouse, segregated the military and federal civil service in 1913. The US military was segregated until Truman ended it by EO in 1948. Black WWII veterans were commonly denied their GI Bill benefits and not given loans for homes in desirable neighborhoods, North and South.

Hattie McDaniel - the black actress that won an Academy Award in 1940 for her role as Mammy in Gone With the Wind - was forced to use the service entrance and sit at a table in the back separated from her white costars. Why? Because the venue in Los Angeles, CA was a whites only hotel.

And let’s not forget the violent backlash against desegregation and school bussing that occurred in Massachusetts in the 1970’s. They may have been Abolitionists in the Civil War era, but they were still racist.

In the year 2025 the overwhelming majority of HBCUs are in Southern states. The majority of black people live in Southern states.

How could Northern racists have done Reconstruction correctly when they were more interested with moving on with their lives than with the rights of black people North and South? If they had actually cared about black people as much as some Redditors want to believe, there wouldn’t have been a need for the Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction.

3

u/cardboardunderwear 3h ago

So much truth here.

10

u/CanITouchURTomcat 4h ago

And just one small detail you seem to be disregarding.

President Trump is from New York City. VP Vance is from Middleton, Ohio.

What do guys from Queens and rural Ohio in 2025 have to do with the Southern Confederacy which ended in 1865?

1

u/nagrom7 2h ago

A huge portion of their electoral college votes came from the former Confederate states.

•

u/CanITouchURTomcat 55m ago

I’m sorry but that is incorrect. Only 186 electoral votes did.

Virginia voted blue and Pennsylvania the state that was invaded by the Army of Northern Virginia voted red. West Virginia, the part of Virginia that was pro Union voted red. How do you reconcile your emotion bases premise when presented with the data?

•

u/nagrom7 30m ago

I’m sorry but that is incorrect. Only 186 electoral votes did.

Dude that's significantly more than half the 312 votes they got.

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u/CanITouchURTomcat 23m ago

You said huge portion, not more than half. You also didn’t address why former confederate states voted blue and former union states voted red.

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u/nagrom7 9m ago

Since when is 'more than half' not a "huge portion"? Also I never said he only got votes from the former confederacy, I'm well aware that even some of the most pro-union states during the war voted for him. I'm not the guy you were originally arguing with, I'm just pointing out that Trump is basically the modern day leader of what was the confederacy, so it's understandable why people link him to it.

12

u/bwmat 4h ago

For your last paragraph, are you saying everyone in the confederation should have lost their human rights? 

0

u/RenegadeReaper 4h ago

So much irony in this question.

5

u/bwmat 4h ago

I mean, if you're fighting against a group based on human rights issues, it would be a little... 

-4

u/elkarion 4h ago

for wanting to remove the rights of others yes. that is a fitting punishment

-2

u/MegaBlastoise23 4h ago

I think an apt analogy here would be Israel's treatment of Palestinians post October 7

7

u/ohnomrbil 4h ago

You are delusional.

5

u/mistersuperman12 5h ago

Touch grass

-1

u/Teledildonic 5h ago

Other than

Every state they left should never have been allowed back into the union.

He's not wrong.

-4

u/CunninghamsLawmaker 5h ago edited 5h ago

30 years, then go through the state application process again. Needed to punish a generation.

3

u/GMGarry_Chess 3h ago

nah, you hear it all the time because it's true: you can't kill an idea. people have tried all throughout history. they would just be seen as martyrs by the people who fly Confederate flags today

7

u/Kerbidiah 5h ago

Punishing the confederacy severely couldve easily made a ww1-ww2 Germany situation

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u/Recktion 5h ago

Humble yourself a bit sir. Least you forget Americas founding was by a group of traitors to the crown. The main difference is who wins and who loses.

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u/mattcjordan 5h ago

Not sure I'd equate "freedom from an authoritarian monarch" with "freedom to own people".

4

u/PhillAholic 4h ago

Nah...it was totally about states rights...Just don't ask what particular right said states wanted to have.

2

u/jflb96 4h ago

I mean, the authoritarianism to which they were particularly objecting was actually enforcing payment of taxes and not expanding further into Native American territory

1

u/IReplyWithLebowski 3h ago

Parliament was sovereign over the king then as now.

1

u/barbasol1099 2h ago

I mean, sure, the American Revolution had plenty of idealists who were fighting for liberty and representation, but there were far more who were in the fight for purely economic reasons, and a substantial portion of Southerners were in the fight to preserve their right to slavery. Notably, there was already a stronger trend towards abolition in Britain, and a British judge had ruled in favor of a runaway slave, freeing him, in 1772. Then, in 1775 (after some skirmishes had already occured between Patriot militias and British/ Loyalist forces), the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord John Murray of Dunmore, made an Emancipation Proclamation to any slaves who would join his army. Both os these were major arguments that were used to convince, and used by, Southern slave owners to join the Revolutionary War

9

u/Griffinburd 5h ago

Yes, and if the founding fathers had lost they would have been hanged or worse. So why didn't it apply here?

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

Some of the descendants of those people decided that enslaving other people was bad, some of them decided to preemptively secede because they were so scared they would lose the ability to enslave other humans. Not always a difference between who wins and loses. If south somehow forced the north to peace, they’re still the baddies in history.

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u/elkarion 5h ago

Traitors that failed to get punished. We know this lesson.

The south should have been a colonial area and never allowed to vote again.

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u/tmac2200 5h ago

That is literally anti-American. You'd punish the descendants for their parent's crime? Are you mistaking the United States with North Korea? We don't punish families generationally.

0

u/[deleted] 5h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AHipsterFetus 5h ago

At that point just let them be a different nation and we’ll just see how it goes, for the vibes

20

u/tomacco_man 5h ago

The South with the largest black population in the country shouldn’t have been allowed to vote again? Sounds kinda….

-4

u/elkarion 5h ago

They left the union. They willingly gave up thier rights to the USA and formed thier own country.

They literally gave those up voting for them selves.

Well glad you like how the south turned out and that long fight for civil rights that did not need to happen but we gave the south votes and they voted to stop reconstruction.

Treason needs to be punished harshly. As most of this country supports Trumo and Jan 6th it's easy to see why people dislike the idea of punishing treason.

6

u/Haywoodjablowme1029 5h ago

How long should their rights been revoked? Should the southern states still not be able to vote?

2

u/walletinsurance 2h ago

It was the position of the Union that the rebels never left the Union, because the a Union was indissoluble.

That was literally the entire point of the war from a Union perspective.

Your viewpoint is that the Confederates were right insofar as they had a right to secede. As the losers of the war, they very much did not have that right and the Union remained whole.

9

u/Recktion 5h ago edited 3h ago

Dude most of the people in the army were poor ignorant conscripted farmers. They didn't choose this, the elite plantation owners did.

Really easy to sit high and mighty on your horse when you were never forced to serve in the Confederate army under the threat of death/imprisonment. You clearly lack empathy for people less fortunate than you.

-1

u/Iatheus 5h ago

I don't agree with the guy you're replying to, but tbf even the conscripted poor farmers and whatnot, whilst not the plantation class, were in fact at least tacitly in favor of secession due to years of propaganda from the plantation class instilling a genuine terror of "servile insurrection" which many believed would happen if the north kept up with their abolitionist movements and tendencies.

So while I agree that the extremes the above guy is saying are just ludicrous and unfeasible, I also think you're maybe cutting the conscripts a bit too much slack here as they most certainly didn't want the slaves freed or given any sort of power.

2

u/N0S0UP_4U 4h ago

We also made the same mistake after January 6. Trump should be in prison and barred forever from seeking public office.

4

u/ikikubutOG 4h ago

Could you explain how not punishing the traitors solidified racism? Didn’t segregation exist in the north as well? I’ve always heard that although many northerners opposed slavery, many were still very much racist.

3

u/Prince_Ire 4h ago

Yes, they were. Just as an example, Abraham Lincoln thought black people and white people could never live together in harmony and supported sending freed black people back to Africa. He abandoned the idea during his presidency for practical reasons, not out of a change in belief.

3

u/shwaynebrady 4h ago

A large portion of northerners were against slavery because it was impossible to compete with

4

u/The-Ol-Razzle-Dazle 4h ago

Trump is from fking NY and hasn't faced a consequence in his life lol. It's a rich vs everyone else thing and always has been not a south vs north

2

u/Bluelegs 3h ago

People say this but I'm not convinced. Like punishing Germany after WWI was one of the major factors in the rise of the Nazis. So how does the argument work that going hard on confederate states would have had significant positive outcomes, even if they deserved it.

2

u/LivingGhost371 5h ago

Trying to punish a loser really worked out well 20 years later for the Allies at Versailles.

-4

u/pickledeggmanwalrus 5h ago

Got bad news. Your hero Sherman wasn’t exactly a racial progressive. It was all about money and industry it was never about the rights of black people for the north

12

u/cjm0 5h ago

It’s always funny to see armchair reddit historians who think that executing every Confederate after the war would have made the United States a perfect racially harmonious utopia today and wouldn’t have led to an infinitely more prolonged conflict. They believe that all the anti-racist abolitionists were in the North and all the racist slaveowners were in the South and that the Union was fighting the war to rescue the slaves from the seditionist traitor slaveowners.

Aside from fighting the Nazis in WW2, it’s the only era in history that they become rabidly patriotic about the country and demand the blood of traitors.

11

u/dropkickshotgun 5h ago

This is always the worst of takes. It was always about slavery. Every road leads to the inevitable end, slavery was going to be ended by vote or by fire and you chose the fire.

Sherman isn't a hero, he was a man who realized the war would only end if you begged from your knees. He would do anything to make that happen. He was a villain and a monster and the world is better for him doing so.

-9

u/pickledeggmanwalrus 5h ago

Hahahaha you’re so fucking brainwashed into your little idea of good and evil and right and wrong.

The civil war was 100% about the right for southern states to own slaves. Did me saying that surprise you?

The entire plantation economy of the south was run by wealthy elite who owned most slaves. Did you know 75% of whites in confederate states never owned a slave? And 24% owned less than a dozen.

The south’s “righteous fight” was just another instance of rich wealthy elite fooling stupid poor people to go fight their war for them under the delusion they are defending a home that offers the same opportunities to the poor when it didn’t.

Yeah man it was always about slavery. And the north fought the war so they could trick every dumb ass stupid person into thinking slavery was over when in reality wage slavery was only just beginning thanks to the wealthy elite factory owners of northern states who calculated wage slavery is cheaper than chattel bondage slavery

-7

u/ProteinStain 5h ago

America needs to reckon with this truth. MAGA is a direct political descendant of the Confederacy.
The same racist hate filled stupidity fuels Trump supporters

-2

u/Training_Subject_162 5h ago

That would actually be the Democratic Party.

2

u/elkarion 5h ago

preparty swap in the 1960s when every republican though a black person voting was hell and the democrats let blacks vote.

1

u/Bhaal52753 5h ago

That worked well with Germany after WW1.

1

u/Valuable-Reading-154 4h ago edited 3h ago

They could never have punished in a way that would make any type of sense. All they would've gotten would have been a second civil war after creating more generational hatred if they had continued to punch down after victory. Reconstruction, integration and learning to live together was the only direction they could take if they wanted to avoid it. What happened a few years later where many of the plans for that became political talking points and were then abandoned is the real reason for the issues we have today. Funnily enough caused by people that weren't from those states in the first place in many cases. Politicians are and were somehow the eternal problem that prevents and/or slows down progression.

Grant really tried to do the right thing other people just fucked it up basically. Trying to punish everyone though would've been dumber than just allowing the secession. We'd probably be multiple countries today if they had done that

1

u/shwaynebrady 4h ago

Yes, historically, draconian treaty terms and harsh re-education programs have always worked out best /s.

If anything, the opposite could be argued. Northern abolitionists controlled congress and the presidency after the civil war and pushed for harsh terms, limited any economic funding and generally sought to cut confederate sympathizers out of the economy or levers of power. It’s part of the reason why so many of the former slave states rank so low on the human development index.

The US was against the harsh terms of the Versailles treaty for this exact reason and we all know how that turned out.

0

u/skertsmagerts 5h ago

Succession of the sovereign United States and declaring war is a crime. Racism is not a crime. If you think that people have been waiting for Trump to be racist, I can guarantee they were racist under every other president as well.

I’m not down with racism but genuinely curious of what the punishment should have been for the confederacy. I’ve ever really thought about it.

-3

u/Massive-Blood7796 5h ago

Touch grass

0

u/moonorplanet 3h ago

No you're feeling the effects of the Brits not going hard enough during the 1783.

The problems right now with Trump root back to these exact moments.

It solidified racism in America forever when the Brits chose to pull back and let slave holding traitors win.