Was Reconstruction more 3T than 1T?

[JasonBlack]

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.

[David Horn]

(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.

That's a bit of a selective reading of the times.  The real issue with Reconstruction: it never really happened.  The South degraded into a neo-antebellum version of itself, with former slaves still under the thumb of the upper-classs whites, and lower-class whites only a small step above them.  Is it any surprise that the North decided to say "screw this" and did just what you noted.  

But it was only the nominal victors who turned their backs on the mess.  The south never quit and never forgot.  We're still dealing with that to this day, and it's getting really ugly again!

[JasonBlack]

(10-13-2022, 05:08 PM)David Horn Wrote: That's a bit of a selective reading of the times.  The real issue with Reconstruction: it never really happened.

Yeah, I remember going over it in history class and asking "uh...what reconstruction? It doesn't seem like a whole lot happened", and the teacher simply responded "exactly".

Quote:The South degraded into a neo-antebellum version of itself, with former slaves still under the thumb of the upper-classs whites, and lower-class whites only a small step above them.  Is it any surprise that the North decided to say "screw this" and did just what you noted.  

But it was only the nominal victors who turned their backs on the mess.  The south never quit and never forgot.  We're still dealing with that to this day, and it's getting really ugly again!

You could argue it kinda-sorta happened between the late 1T/early 2T of the current saeculum, but even then....only kinda-sorta. The modern south is essentially "anarchy with vestiges of aristocratic manners". Imo, this is still preferable to the degeneracy of the inner-cities (if we're talking about "The South" excluding large metropolitan areas) or the PC police/draconian covid lockdowns of the liberal coasts, but to call them "reconstructed" could be overstatement.

[pbrower2a]

For the Freedmen, Reconstruction was supposed to be a 1T. Southern blacks took on Civic characteristics in attempts to establish effective institutions. Southern whites sought to return as much as possible to the norms of the antebellum era in what looks like an effort to revive a 3T. That of course was a nasty conflict.

[JasonBlack]

(10-13-2022, 07:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: For the Freedmen, Reconstruction was supposed to be a 1T. Southern blacks took on Civic characteristics  in attempts to establish effective institutions. Southern whites sought to return as much as possible to the norms of the antebellum era in what looks like an effort to revive a 3T. That of course was a nasty conflict.

I get the sense that 1Ts in general have a tendency to pretend more problems have been solved than was actually the case. This makes young idealists look around like "uh...am I crazy or something? Does no one else see this?".

[pbrower2a]

(10-13-2022, 11:17 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(10-13-2022, 07:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: For the Freedmen, Reconstruction was supposed to be a 1T. Southern blacks took on Civic characteristics  in attempts to establish effective institutions. Southern whites sought to return as much as possible to the norms of the antebellum era in what looks like an effort to revive a 3T. That of course was a nasty conflict.

I get the sense that 1Ts in general have a tendency to pretend more problems have been solved than was actually the case. This makes young idealists look around like "uh...am I crazy or something? Does no one else see this?".

For Southern whites the American Civil War was a nearly unmitigated disaster. For many,  personal recovery from a catastrophe often involves reconstructing or recreating things as much as possible as they had been before the disaster. This is a predictable course of behavior for many. So your successful store burns down. What do you do? You start over if you can.. well, not quite from scratch because you might have insurance claims to collect and you have loyal customers. Your suppliers will want to do business with you again. (Much of the insurance was on merchandise bought outright or put on consignment). If you are young enough, you will not go back to the farm or return to factory work. 

Being a soldier in the Confederate Army wasn't so great. The pay was poor, and at a certain time you were likely to become a POW. Confederate debt was worthless. If one was a slave-owner, then a huge asset was wiped off your books. If you dealt in slaves as a business, you owned Confederate currency or bonds, had collateral as Confederate assets, or had assets denominated in Confederate currency had been wiped out -- and whatever two-legged inventory you owned before it was emancipated was wiped off your books as a financial asset. 

At least the Yankees didn't take land away from the planter class or small farmers, but postwar state and local governments needed tax revenue and needed it fast. Before the Civil War, slaves were property to tax; after the Civil War, such people were no longer property.  That meant big increases in taxes upon just about any other asset, and in a rural area that meant farmland. Much of the Southern white resentment against Reconstruction was a form of tax revolt.

Freed slaves in place were emancipated without assets and were obliged, for lack of other means, to submit to the terms that planters offered, often as sharecroppers or low-paid farm laborers. Pay might have been little more than room and board. Even so, those former slaves typically availed themselves of something that had been denied: the precious gift of literacy. Slaves may have been unlettered, but they weren't stupid. Recognizing that ignorance is not bliss, many freedmen in place became excessively educated for being serf-like subjects of their former owners. (Note well that the perfect level of education for a despotic or totalitarian order is bare literacy. People who can read between the lines are less suited for domination than those who can just barely read and write). 

The ex-slaves who may have done best were those who took Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation seriously and escaped to the Union lines. They were free, but they were also a highly-desirable source of labor for such work as the building or rebuilding of fortifications. Paid somewhat fairly they could accumulate savings. Some even joined the Union Army. They got paid in Union currency which would not be devalued after the war. Such was precious for starting businesses or buying the assets that tradesmen needed.  Many of these became the elected officials of the postwar South. 

Freedmen established institutions from political machines (natural for them as it was for white people Up North), social organizations, businesses, churches independent of "white" oversight, and even colleges). Many historically-black colleges and universities (HBCU) date from this time. Is this surprising? The Puritans established Harvard College in 1636 and were delayed only in having an adequate population.  This may not have been quite paradise for blacks, but considering what happened after the reactionary restoration of White Power with the aid of hooded proto-fascists, this was a halcyon time of great promises for black people in the South. It is easy to see what sort of world Freedmen would have established had it not been for white racists destroying many of the commercial and institutional achievements of the Freedmen and taking away such freedom as they had. 

Political and economic life was a delicate balance at best before the end of Reconstruction, but after 1877 the condition of most blacks went to subjection by the agrarian elite. African-American businesses typically went bust, and bank deposits disintegrated. Southern whites long had a distrust of commerce, banking, and industry because people in those activities typically did better than small farmers. Add to this, they were competition for the super-cheap labor necessary for Junker-like estates of the sort that survived the war and Reconstruction. 

White southerners long resisted industrialization at the expense of grinding poverty in what would now be seen as economic underdevelopment characteristic of much of the Third World by post-colonial standards in non-industrial countries. It is telling that huge numbers of the descendants of Freedmen went Up North to where the industry was (well, so did many "Mountain South" whites who also got the economic and political shaft from the agrarian elites of the South) and where there was opportunity to escape the grinding poverty that they knew all too well. White southerners often wallowed in nostalgia over the Good Old Days as they understood them long after the end of the Civil War to the extent of reviving the Confederate heritage about fifty years later.  This included the naïfs who started erected monuments to Confederate political and military leaders but also those who established the dangerous, fascist Second (1915) Klan. Well, this vile group came into existence before Mussolini established his totalitarian clique and before Adolf "Antichrist" Hitler got some bickering right-wingers and pseudo-socialist cranks to accept his idea of "National Socialism". The Klan already had the gaudy symbolism, the racism, the night rallies, the fraudulent recollection of history, the Jew-hating, and the hostility to organized labor characteristic of European Nazis and fascists. Consider the source. The Second Klan would achieve great influence even outside the South as the biggest mass movement in America before MAGA.

Up North after the Civil War, Americans quickly went 1T as a rule. That also created a huge regional divide.

[pbrower2a]

(more)

Any Crisis Era is itself a transition between 3T and 1T. The best that can happen is that 1T ways supplant the discreditable ephemera of a 3T. If the economic basis of 3T ways vanishes, then that itself forces political innovation such as the New Deal. I recall seeing some old books, one of them touting the "New Era" economics of the 1920's, and it is basically the idea that those who have the gold make the rules for everyone else... but that those who own the gold are the only competent and trustworthy people to decide everything, I saw those books in the 1960's and recognized that nobody in his right mind would want to return to the 1920's except perhaps to get his youth back. People can say whatever they want about the Great Depression, but America grew its way out of the Great Depression with economic reforms (especially in saddling bankers with the role of guardians of Other People's Money instead of participating in the gambles of the time), large investments in infrastructure, a crackdown on gangsterism and violent crime, and the formation of new shoestring businesses. By 1939 America was far better off than it was in 1929 from the standpoint of education, consumer goods, and economic stability. All that had not recovered were the speculative values of securities in the heady days preceding the 1929 crash. High taxes on passive investments made stock-market investments unattractive.

The 3T "New Era" economics and politics look much like neoliberalism such as Reaganomics and Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America". Both are top-down and plutocratic; both expect the common man to defer to the will of the only people who supposedly know what is best for us -- basically that the elites take everything that they want and out of generosity allow us to survive on such scraps as they deem fitting for us. The difference between the economic meltdowns beginning in 1929 and 2007 (the real Crashes took place in 1930 and 2008) is that the meltdown beginning in 1929 forced the economic elites into survival mode. They may have despised "That Man in the White House", but they had to keep their focus on economic survival instead of political power that can allow economic elites to profiteer profusely. Political leaders of 2008 and 2009 backed the banks and prevented what would have been analogues to the disastrous bank runs that turned a crash similar to those of 1930 and 2008 into the Great Depression. Within a couple of years, Big Business sponsored the Tea Party that ensured that any reforms after 1910 would be dedicated to enriching a Master Class of shareholders, landlords, giant corporate farms, and business executives.

We need recall that the political basis of our Republic depends upon the absence of any economic or bureaucratic power able to hold the rest of Americans in thrall. Giant businesses, let alone the bureaucratic structures analogous to the Soviet nomenklatura that develops within them, did not exist. Government may have been only white male owners of small-scale property (that would eventually change to the better), but nobody could dominate political life through the ownership of assets upon which people depended for sustenance. When most business (including agriculture) is small, then plutocracy of the sort that now holds us in near thrall does not exist. Sure, the plutocrats tout the freedom that they believe in, but that is mostly the freedom to take everything that can be taken without responsibility for anything else. Contemporary plutocrats in America are no better than feudal lords, and the sooner that we recognize this, the sooner we will have real freedom.

Giant industries have been consolidating monopolistic control of industry, and they have also concentrated economic activity in a few places where sort-of-prosperous people get to live. Of course, urban landlords get every penny possible from tenants. A bureaucratic elite of executives better at controlling workers than at creating wealth has emerged and gets rewarded. Agriculture increasingly resembles Junker-style estates that have a corporate structure that depends upon a powerless rural proletariat of farmhands and those who work in rural industries such as dairies and slaughterhouses.

These industries have a good thing going, as do their well-paid retainers within the businesses and their political clients who dominate political life most of the time. If their power were entirely economic we might not have such problems as we have. They can buy media, and with that they can shape politics. I look at the Dark Money spent on political ads that defame anyone who does not share their agenda -- that he who owns the gold makes the rules and that no human suffering can ever be excessive in the service of elite power, indulgence, and gain.

Pointless suffering is evil, which explains much of the content of criminal codes and that why we expect physicians to administer strong pain-killers to those who need it (such as morphine to terminal-cancer patients), set broken bones, and treat painful afflictions. We do things to prevent fires and auto accidents. We have dentists to remove abscessed teeth and to replace cavities with fillings. We have all sorts of entertainments to fill time that would otherwise be numbing boredom. Economic hardship and distress are painful in their ways.

...A 3T is excellent for those who can profiteer from it by fleecing and exploiting others, but eventually the opportunities to fleece and exploit others vanishes in a market crash or a catastrophic war. A 1T allows more widespread prosperity and recognizes the significance of the contributions of those who do the real work. That alone evens out much.

[Eric the Green]

(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

[pbrower2a]

(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.        .

[Eric the Green]

(10-14-2022, 02:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(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. 

I think something like this is what the T4T authors had in mind. Socialism and Labor Union power did not get going in the USA until the following 2T starting in 1886. So there was not ready-made ideological framework yet for that kind of collectivism in the USA. So the more-collectivist civic order consisted of larger corporate structures and capital formation. Monopoly expanded. This may be free enteprise but it's not rugged individualism. The protectionist state as advocated by List took root after 1879 because of some high tariff laws, and this expanded up and into the Great Depression.

[nguyenivy]

(10-17-2022, 03:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-14-2022, 02:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(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. 

I think something like this is what the T4T authors had in mind. Socialism and Labor Union power did not get going in the USA until the following 2T starting in 1886. So there was not ready-made ideological framework yet for that kind of collectivism in the USA. So the more-collectivist civic order consisted of larger corporate structures and capital formation. Monopoly expanded. This may be free enteprise but it's not rugged individualism. The protectionist state as advocated by List took root after 1879 because of some high tariff laws, and this expanded up and into the Great Depression.

By List, were you referring to Friedrich List (mentioned in this lengthy article: How The World Works (1993 Dec) )?

[Eric the Green]

(11-28-2022, 12:55 AM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(10-17-2022, 03:14 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-14-2022, 02:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(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. 

I think something like this is what the T4T authors had in mind. Socialism and Labor Union power did not get going in the USA until the following 2T starting in 1886. So there was not ready-made ideological framework yet for that kind of collectivism in the USA. So the more-collectivist civic order consisted of larger corporate structures and capital formation. Monopoly expanded. This may be free enteprise but it's not rugged individualism. The protectionist state as advocated by List took root after 1879 because of some high tariff laws, and this expanded up and into the Great Depression.

By List, were you referring to Friedrich List (mentioned in this lengthy article: How The World Works (1993 Dec) )?

I think so. I don't know about the article; it requires a subscription.