General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The South was not sufficiently punished after the war [View all]thucythucy
(8,045 posts)Treaties can only be signed between sovereign nations, and the south was never considered sovereign by the north--it was a rebellion, like Shay's Rebellion, except instead of poor farmers protesting the oligarchy, it was the oligarchy coopting poor whites to protect their racist empire.
Had the major traitors been tried in open court--with due process rights--and convicted, their estates would have been confiscated and that would have provided the land to divide up among not only emancipated slaves, but poor landless whites as well. Lincoln very much wanted poor whites to benefit from the breakup of what was then called "the slave power"--the slave-owning oligarchy--so that they too would have an investment in better conditions for blacks. That's what "Forty Acres and a Mule" was supposed to be. But after Lincoln's murder the idea was abandoned by President Johnson, much to the dismay of progressive Republicans who were Lincoln's closest political allies.
Instead, the oligarchs kept their power and imposed--through violence--a system of apartheid that lasted another century and cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people--blighting the lives of entire generations of American citizens. Compared to that atrocity, the trial in open court of a pack of murderous traitors would have been an act of true justice.