(10-14-2022, 01:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(10-13-2022, 02:44 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: Unlike past and subsequent 1Ts, Reconstruction was an era of rugged self-determination and personal freedom, rather than trust, conformity and optimism. In place of collectivistic Civics leading the rebuilding of society, we had gritty, individualistic Reactives (Gilded Generation), who chose to focus their rebuilding efforts primarily on industry and private enterprise.
All of this sounds more like a 3T to me than a 1T.
I can't deny that this is a probable view of the Gilded Age. Reconstruction though was a fine era and it lasted 12 years so it was a good attempt at a 1T. Far from being mediocre, fine black legislators were at work and civil rights laws were passed. It was hard to say there was consensus though since the whites formed the KKK and the late sixties were an "age of hate".
THere are lots of documentaries and interviews available that correct the wrong impression conveyed in the older history textbooks that say Reconstruction was a failed, extreme or inadvisable experiment. That is all wrong. The only thing wrong is that it ended, and the "redeemed" confederacy got even worse in the 2T.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_q...ion+on+pbs
https://youtu.be/eLnHXzCRtF0
The Gilded in the North... and for as long as they could, Freedmen, took the Civic role even if they were not the ideal people to do so.
In sharp contrast to the Yankee and Freedmen Gilded the Southern whites mostly found themselves in much worse economic condition after the war than before. Their assets as slaves before the war were no longer assets; they were free. Although the land was as productive as ever, cotton which had been a mainstay of the Southern economy was itself not so valuable. The British established large cotton farms in Egypt to fill the gap that American cotton no longer did, so supply was up without more demand. Ouch! The Freedmen levied taxes for schools that had not then existed... those taxes must have hurt people who made sure to keep slave illiterate so that they could never organize in revolts and mass escapes. (There were other costs; half the budget of the Mississippi state government went to prostheses for lost limbs, mostly of former Confederate soldiers),
... Usually the losers of a war are silenced after they are defeated. Survivors often become the slaves of the victors. The galley slaves of Roman times never got the chance to write their memoirs. The Confederates wrote plenty of memoirs glorifying the Lost Cause and a way of life, gracious for masters but hideous for the exploited slaves, literally (ahem!) Gone with the Wind. .
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.