The dangers of revolutionary right-wing rhetoric

[wgbgator]

[quote=Dreamliner;3570713]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

Thereeublicans worked to stir up black resentment in the aftermath of the war.

Yeah, and what I had in mind was the sort of discussion that would incorporate the way the Radical Reconstructionists worked to foster tension between the races. It wasn't as if newly-freed blacks immediately set out to conduct reprisals. They were in very large part goaded into such.

That's a very Southern (and IMO inaccurate) reading of post-civil war history that tends to go something like "there was little racial tension until the big bad Northerners came down and stirred things up." A sentiment that was reprised during the Civil Rights era. Obviously, that's oversimplified, but that historiography exists as well (the Dunning school) and was romanticized in films like "Birth of a Nation" and the popular novel "The Clansmen." Their (Dunning) interpretations are largely rejected today, but not entirely.

[Dreamliner]

[quote=wgbgator;3570760]

Originally Posted by Dreamliner

That's a very Southern (and IMO inaccurate) reading of post-civil war history that tends to go something like "there was little racial tension until the big bad Northerners came down and stirred things up." A sentiment that was reprised during the Civil Rights era. Obviously, that's oversimplified, but that historiography exists as well (the Dunning school) and was romanticized in films like "Birth of a Nation" and the popular novel "The Clansmen." Their interpretations are largely rejected today, but not entirely.

Obviously not entirely, as is evidenced by my posts. Where is the evidence of mass-reprisals apart from Northern meddling ?

Now, of course I'm not suggesting that blacks generally loved their white slaveholders. But surely the converse Griffiths would be the Stowes.

[wgbgator]

[quote=Dreamliner;3570775]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

Obviously not entirely, as is evidenced by my posts. Where is the evidence of mass-reprisals apart from Northern meddling ?

Now, of course I'm not suggesting that blacks generally loved their white slaveholders. But surely the converse Griffiths would be the Stowes.

Well, traditionally "Nothern meddling" largely means upsetting the racial order of the South - whether slavery, black codes or Jim Crow laws. The system of control was already there, hence no mass reprisals without "meddling." The great Southern fear was that blacks might take revenge if the racial order was upset, hence fighting for slavery when it was in bad economic interest to do so, the KKK, and "massive resistance" to integration in the 50s and 60s.

[Dreamliner]

[quote=wgbgator;3570825]

Originally Posted by Dreamliner

Well, traditionally "Nothern meddling" largely means upsetting the racial order of the South - whether slavery, black codes or Jim Crow laws. The system of control was already there, hence no mass reprisals without "meddling." The great Southern fear was that blacks might take revenge if the racial order was upset, hence fighting for slavery when it was in bad economic interest to do so, the KKK, and "massive resistance" to integration in the 50s and 60s.

But since every American knows about the KKK, but few know that the Radical Republicans purposefully installed blacks as occupation troops and purposefully installed blacks in government positions (while barring whites), and promised blacks handsome stipends for voting Republican (while reneging on the stipends), doesn't this give the impression that the Victor's Narrative has held sway ?

[wgbgator]

[quote=Dreamliner;3570979]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

But since every American knows about the KKK, but few know that the Radical Republicans purposefully installed blacks as occupation troops and purposefully installed blacks in government positions (while barring whites), and promised blacks handsome stipends for voting Republican (while reneging on the stipends), doesn't this give the impression that the Victor's Narrative has held sway ?

Only lately, because the "victor's narrative" (much of it written by Southerners like C Vann Woodward) replaced the Dunning / U.B. Phillips / Birth of a Nation narrative only in the last 60 years or so, with some of their earlier insights creeping back in. Up to the 1950s, their view was what was in the history books, and what dominated the scholarship of the post-war South. So really, it was just a revision of the "Loser's Narrative" which had gained traction post-Reconstruction in the North and South. At the time, the North was dealing with threats to its own social control system and social order with the influx of eastern and southern European immigrants. Suddenly, what the South had been saying made a lot of sense. That's why Democrats started winning elections again, and a Northern progressive like Woodrow Wilson could segregate Washington D.C.

Altogether though, I'd say Reconstruction is probably one of the more undertaught episodes in American history, precisly because there is no "feel-good" narrative attached (whatever side one leans toward) - its full of corruption, violence, betrayal and lost opportunities by all parties.

[Gator_Tom66]

1898?

[Dreamliner]

[quote=wgbgator;3571073]

Originally Posted by Dreamliner

Only lately, because the "victor's narrative" (much of it written by Southerners like C Vann Woodward) replaced the Dunning / U.B. Phillips / Birth of a Nation narrative only in the last 60 years or so, with some of their earlier insights creeping back in. Up to the 1950s, their view was what was in the history books, and what dominated the scholarship of the post-war South. So really, it was just a revision of the "Loser's Narrative" which had gained traction post-Reconstruction in the North and South. At the time, the North was dealing with threats to its own social control system and social order with the influx of eastern and southern European immigrants. Suddenly, what the South had been saying made a lot of sense. That's why Democrats started winning elections again, and a Northern progressive like Woodrow Wilson could segregate Washington D.C.

Altogether though, I'd say Reconstruction is probably one of the more undertaught episodes in American history, precisly because there is no "feel-good" narrative attached (whatever side one leans toward) - its full of corruption, violence, betrayal and lost opportunities by all parties.

I've combed the records and do not see where the victor's narrative supplanted the loser's narrative. Rather, it seems to be the case that the victor's narrative has always reigned, whereas the loser's narrative has occasionally broken through to the attendent gasps.

[wgbgator]

[quote=Dreamliner;3571091]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

I've combed the records and do not see where the victor's narrative supplanted the loser's narrative. Rather, it seems to be the case that the victor's narrative has always reigned, whereas the loser's narrative has occasionally broken through to the attendent gasps.

I'd say its pretty evidenced by the persistance of disparaging terms like "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" (coined by the Dunning school) that routinely found their way into textbooks until the 60s (and are still in use):

The interpretation of post-Civil War Reconstruction in the United States that Dunning and his students propounded was the dominant theory taught in American schools for the first half of the 20th century. The viewpoint of Dunning and his followers favored the reversal of political gains the freed people had made in the area of civil rights during the period of Reconstruction.

Dunning and his followers also criticized white Southerners who did not stand with the Confederacy during the Civil War and who joined the Republican Party after the war. Former Confederate leaders referred to the largest group of white Southern Republicans who did not identify with the goals of former plantation owners as Scalawags. They also referred to Northern whites who moved to the southern part of the United States after the war as Carpetbaggers. Both were derisive terms that Dunning and his followers popularized.

Reconstruction's caricatures include the "carpetbaggers", whom southern whites portrayed as greedy interlopers exploiting the South; the "scalawags", who were traitorous southern whites collaborating with the Yankees; the freedmen, whom the Dunning School portrayed as sometimes violent and depraved and at other times ignorant and lost; "copperheads" who were Northerners who promoted peace and opposed war measures taken by President Abraham Lincoln and who were given that moniker by their Republican opponents; and former Confederates, who were the heroes of the story told by the Dunning School of historians. Dunning and his followers portrayed former plantation owners as honorable people with the South's best interests in mind, according to a historical essay on myths of Reconstruction.[McCrary, Peyton, "The Reconstruction Myth" in Encyclopedia of Southern Culture]

Interpreting the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson Dunning lent academic respectability to the late 19th century's view of Reconstruction history pioneered by segregationist Southern Democrats and their northern sympathizers. Dunning wrote from the point of view of the defeated South and painted the Radical Republicans as villains. His interpretation served the ideological purposes of upper class southern whites eager to put the divisions of the Civil War behind. The Dunning viewpoint saturated public memory in history textbooks until the dawn of the modern civil rights era. Dunning School influence is evident in John F. Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, which admired Edmund G. Ross, the Kansas Republican senator who cast the vote that acquitted Johnson.[Joshua Zeitz The New Republic, 18 January 1999, pp. 13-15]

[Dreamliner]

[quote=wgbgator;3571147]

Originally Posted by Dreamliner

I'd say its pretty evidenced by the persistance of disparaging terms like "scalawags" and "carpetbaggers" (coined by the Dunning school) that routinely found their way into textbooks until the 60s (and are still in use):

Oh sure, in all my schooling, there were always the obligatory references to the way Southerners might have felt ... and then there was what REALLY happened.