philly rabbit
Verified User
"I admit that the negro has made little progress from barbarism to civilization, and that he is in deplorable condition since his emancipation. That he is worse off, in many respects, then he was a slave. i am compelled to admit it but I contend that the fault is not his, but that of his heartless accusers. though he is nominally free, he is actually a slave. i here and now denounce his so called emancipation as a stupendous fraud - a fraud upon him, a fraud upon the world. Take his (the black person's)relation to the national government and we shall find him a deserted, a defrauded, a swindled, and an outcast-ed man. In law free, in fact a slave."
Black leader Frederick Douglass - speaking in Washington DC following his tour of the black south on the twenty sixth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation - April 16, 1888.
So much for Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation. Because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated nobody will ever know for sure what he would propose to reconstruct the south after the War for Southern Independence but already knowing that Lincoln wanted to reunite both north and south as quickly as possible after creating his new compulsory union with both the former voluntary union and states rights crumbled within the devastation that was the south, and also knowing that Lincoln had a good working relationship with congress and was able to keep the radical element of his republican party under wraps, it is my opinion that what would have been his policies would have never come close to the absolute unconstitutional tyranny of the policies set forth on the southern people by the radical republican elements of his party. When Andrew Johnson became president following Lincoln's assassination the first thing that occurred was the immediate power of the government being completely taken over and controlled by the radical elements of Lincoln's republican administration with Johnson himself void of influence in congress and any more intelligent reasoning on post war plans for the south whatsoever except in his own home state of Tennessee. Thus the punishment of the south for the war was launched upon the heads of southerners already completely devastated by war, impoverished, and disillusioned, it was then that the American federal government for the only time in it's history up to this present date did not rehabilitate a people it had defeated in a war but instead added to a people's suffering in immeasurable fury.
In the breach, three million newly freed blacks without vocational training, without access to education, shunned and unwanted by a racist north and faced with deplorable living conditions within a devastated south. In September of 1865 the creation of something called the Freedman's Bureau in Washington DC was supposed to handle this problem and provide the necessary relief but federal funding to the southern states who were under military occupation and controlled by what was known as the union league had always confiscated all funding and used it diligently to fill their own pockets as the occupation by northern profit opportunists known as carpetbaggers and their southern counterparts known as scalawags built the republican party within the states of the defeated south through coercion and lies of promises of forty acres and a mule for blacks if they voted collectively for the republicans in local and state elections.
Intimidation and terror by black militias under the direction of union army officers and the forced taxation of white southerners who were impoverished by the war resulted in the confiscation of the only property they had left on purpose as illiterate blacks were deliberately placed in positions of authority in counties and districts with only the union army to answer to as they continued their corruption and profiting off of defeated and impoverished whites.
It is important to point out that the unconstitutional 14th amendment which stopped suffrage for all former members of the Confederate government and knowing most whites were also denied suffrage without signing a sworn allegiance to the federal government while at the same time most blacks in the north were still denied voting rights were then in turn lied to and formed into voting blocs that only served northern interests by the band of northern losers who invaded the southern region to profit off the misery and suffering of both races and them being called carpetbaggers. With no law and order to protect them other than the mercy of black militias under the so called union leagues and with their few remaining belongings being confiscated, secret organizations began to operate within the stricken areas and in December of 1865 came the most prominent of these called the Ku Klux Klan founded as a defense against occupying federal troops and black societies by three ex. confederate generals,James Clanton of Alabama, James George of Mississippi, and John Gordon of Georgia. Then in 1867 a southern hero, former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was given command of the secret organization and for some time this organization was the only law and order and justice available to southern whites. It were Forrest and his Klan (usually spelled out and called the Clan)that eventually drove the carpetbaggers out of the south then finally after twelve long years of occupation the federal forces withdrew and the Democratic party began to be reestablished in districts and counties and the Klan disbanded but not without murders and subjugation of blacks by forces generated only by hatred and racism to a point that Forrest himself ordered that all Klansman remove their hoods for identification purposes. But only until the Democratic process was restored, military occupation and secret societies ended and suffrage was returned to white people did the Klan disperse, never to rise again until the early twentieth century.
The Federal government put in motion in the south a system of unconstitutional rule during reconstruction that set the south on a course of poverty, backwardness, ignorance and divisive racism that lasted over a century while the south remaining isolated from the rest of the country throughout.
Black leader Frederick Douglass - speaking in Washington DC following his tour of the black south on the twenty sixth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation - April 16, 1888.
So much for Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation. Because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated nobody will ever know for sure what he would propose to reconstruct the south after the War for Southern Independence but already knowing that Lincoln wanted to reunite both north and south as quickly as possible after creating his new compulsory union with both the former voluntary union and states rights crumbled within the devastation that was the south, and also knowing that Lincoln had a good working relationship with congress and was able to keep the radical element of his republican party under wraps, it is my opinion that what would have been his policies would have never come close to the absolute unconstitutional tyranny of the policies set forth on the southern people by the radical republican elements of his party. When Andrew Johnson became president following Lincoln's assassination the first thing that occurred was the immediate power of the government being completely taken over and controlled by the radical elements of Lincoln's republican administration with Johnson himself void of influence in congress and any more intelligent reasoning on post war plans for the south whatsoever except in his own home state of Tennessee. Thus the punishment of the south for the war was launched upon the heads of southerners already completely devastated by war, impoverished, and disillusioned, it was then that the American federal government for the only time in it's history up to this present date did not rehabilitate a people it had defeated in a war but instead added to a people's suffering in immeasurable fury.
In the breach, three million newly freed blacks without vocational training, without access to education, shunned and unwanted by a racist north and faced with deplorable living conditions within a devastated south. In September of 1865 the creation of something called the Freedman's Bureau in Washington DC was supposed to handle this problem and provide the necessary relief but federal funding to the southern states who were under military occupation and controlled by what was known as the union league had always confiscated all funding and used it diligently to fill their own pockets as the occupation by northern profit opportunists known as carpetbaggers and their southern counterparts known as scalawags built the republican party within the states of the defeated south through coercion and lies of promises of forty acres and a mule for blacks if they voted collectively for the republicans in local and state elections.
Intimidation and terror by black militias under the direction of union army officers and the forced taxation of white southerners who were impoverished by the war resulted in the confiscation of the only property they had left on purpose as illiterate blacks were deliberately placed in positions of authority in counties and districts with only the union army to answer to as they continued their corruption and profiting off of defeated and impoverished whites.
It is important to point out that the unconstitutional 14th amendment which stopped suffrage for all former members of the Confederate government and knowing most whites were also denied suffrage without signing a sworn allegiance to the federal government while at the same time most blacks in the north were still denied voting rights were then in turn lied to and formed into voting blocs that only served northern interests by the band of northern losers who invaded the southern region to profit off the misery and suffering of both races and them being called carpetbaggers. With no law and order to protect them other than the mercy of black militias under the so called union leagues and with their few remaining belongings being confiscated, secret organizations began to operate within the stricken areas and in December of 1865 came the most prominent of these called the Ku Klux Klan founded as a defense against occupying federal troops and black societies by three ex. confederate generals,James Clanton of Alabama, James George of Mississippi, and John Gordon of Georgia. Then in 1867 a southern hero, former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was given command of the secret organization and for some time this organization was the only law and order and justice available to southern whites. It were Forrest and his Klan (usually spelled out and called the Clan)that eventually drove the carpetbaggers out of the south then finally after twelve long years of occupation the federal forces withdrew and the Democratic party began to be reestablished in districts and counties and the Klan disbanded but not without murders and subjugation of blacks by forces generated only by hatred and racism to a point that Forrest himself ordered that all Klansman remove their hoods for identification purposes. But only until the Democratic process was restored, military occupation and secret societies ended and suffrage was returned to white people did the Klan disperse, never to rise again until the early twentieth century.
The Federal government put in motion in the south a system of unconstitutional rule during reconstruction that set the south on a course of poverty, backwardness, ignorance and divisive racism that lasted over a century while the south remaining isolated from the rest of the country throughout.