I've always said it reconstruction could have been done easily and without losing northern support through war weariness if they had just recruited the freed slaves as the soldiers enacting martial law against former confederates. For one thing the freed slaves almost certainly would already know all the confederate sympathisers names and addresses
The north was not free of bigotry. The reason why reconstruction failed was also because northerners didn't really want to see freed slaves gain political power.
Like, they didn't want them as slaves because that was a threat to free labor, but they also didn't want them succeeding too much in the marketplace either. They really just wanted them to be free, and be out of sight, out of mind.
Having freedmen "rule" over southerners would be a step too far
A lot of Northerners didn't oppose slavery from a moralistic standpoint.
He'll Lincoln was, by definition, a white supremacist. He thought black people could never be equal to white people he just didn't think that meant they should be enslaved.
Also the emancipation proclamation was more about cutting the Souths economy off at the knees than it was about justice.
I've always said it reconstruction could have been done easily and without losing northern support through war weariness if they had just recruited the freed slaves as the soldiers enacting martial law against former confederates. For one thing the freed slaves almost certainly would already know all the confederate sympathisers names and addresses
The north was not free of bigotry. The reason why reconstruction failed was also because northerners didn't really want to see freed slaves gain political power.
Like, they didn't want them as slaves because that was a threat to free labor, but they also didn't want them succeeding too much in the marketplace either. They really just wanted them to be free, and be out of sight, out of mind.
Having freedmen "rule" over southerners would be a step too far
A lot of Northerners didn't oppose slavery from a moralistic standpoint.
He'll Lincoln was, by definition, a white supremacist. He thought black people could never be equal to white people he just didn't think that meant they should be enslaved.
Also the emancipation proclamation was more about cutting the Souths economy off at the knees than it was about justice.