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I haven't heard that interpetation of history. It sounds dubious to me... after all, slavery was abolished, and the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. And the Sou

I haven't heard that interpetation of history. It sounds dubious to me... after all, slavery was abolished, and the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. And the South was set way back, economically, compared to the North.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
yeah but the South was already on its way to being set way back, because it was agrarian and the North industrialized.
watwut 6y ago
Yes slavery was abolished and blacks became very politically active and successful in period after war. And after that came succesfull crackdown on their rights. They lost rights, not all the way up to slavery but still very significantly. And after that came civil rights period.
jrochkind1 6y ago
Have you read much about Reconstruction? It is a period of history absolutely essential for understanding how we got to where we are, which is often not taught at all to schoolchildren. It began with Black elected legislators and city council members and increased Black economic activity and equality and integration. It ended with the return of de facto Black serfdom and disenfranchisement in the South. And that's when they started putting up the statues. (Who is "they"? It wasn't Black people putting up the statues, was it? So who won and who lost?) Heather Cox Richardson (who has gained recognition lately with her daily posts on politics) is actually a historian, her book is titled "How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America" Here's a New Yorker article by Adam Gopnick with the same title, which is actually a review of a different book by Henry Louis Gates. It gives you an overview of how Reconstruction went. > One mistake the North made was to allow the Confederate leadership to escape essentially unscathed. Lincoln’s plea for charity and against malice was admirable, but it left out the third term of the liberal equation: charity for all, malice to none, and political reform for the persecutors. The premise of postwar de-Nazification, in Germany, was a sound one: you had to root out the evil and make it clear that it was one, and only then would minds change. The gingerly treatment of the secessionists gave the impression—more, it created the reality—that treason in defense of slavery was a forgivable, even “honorable,” difference of opinion. Despite various halfhearted and soon rescinded congressional measures to prevent ex-Confederate leaders from returning to power, many of them didn’t just skip out but skipped right back into Congress. These are the people who had the resources and power to put up those statues... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/how-the-south-won-the-civil-war https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/how-the-south-...
- chmod600 6y ago
  Thank you for the explanation, I see what you mean. I wouldn't describe it as the South "winning", but the North clearly didn't solidify the win quickly enough. I wonder whether that was a bad idea, or whether it came from some real fragility of the North's win, or the fact that it was a civil rather than a foreign win?

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

yeah but the South was already on its way to being set way back, because it was agrarian and the North industrialized.

watwut 6y ago

Yes slavery was abolished and blacks became very politically active and successful in period after war. And after that came succesfull crackdown on their rights. They lost rights, not all the way up to slavery but still very significantly. And after that came civil rights period.

jrochkind1 6y ago

Have you read much about Reconstruction? It is a period of history absolutely essential for understanding how we got to where we are, which is often not taught at all to schoolchildren. It began with Black elected legislators and city council members and increased Black economic activity and equality and integration. It ended with the return of de facto Black serfdom and disenfranchisement in the South. And that's when they started putting up the statues. (Who is "they"? It wasn't Black people putting up the statues, was it? So who won and who lost?) Heather Cox Richardson (who has gained recognition lately with her daily posts on politics) is actually a historian, her book is titled "How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America" Here's a New Yorker article by Adam Gopnick with the same title, which is actually a review of a different book by Henry Louis Gates. It gives you an overview of how Reconstruction went. > One mistake the North made was to allow the Confederate leadership to escape essentially unscathed. Lincoln’s plea for charity and against malice was admirable, but it left out the third term of the liberal equation: charity for all, malice to none, and political reform for the persecutors. The premise of postwar de-Nazification, in Germany, was a sound one: you had to root out the evil and make it clear that it was one, and only then would minds change. The gingerly treatment of the secessionists gave the impression—more, it created the reality—that treason in defense of slavery was a forgivable, even “honorable,” difference of opinion. Despite various halfhearted and soon rescinded congressional measures to prevent ex-Confederate leaders from returning to power, many of them didn’t just skip out but skipped right back into Congress. These are the people who had the resources and power to put up those statues... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/how-the-south-won-the-civil-war https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/how-the-south-...

chmod600 6y ago
Thank you for the explanation, I see what you mean. I wouldn't describe it as the South "winning", but the North clearly didn't solidify the win quickly enough. I wonder whether that was a bad idea, or whether it came from some real fragility of the North's win, or the fact that it was a civil rather than a foreign win?