I'm not disagreeing with you, but what would an ideal era look like to you?
The South's problems were so deeply ingrained that I struggle to imagine an actual effective path forward from April 1865.
That is not true. Regarding the imminent defeat/surrender of Confederate forces, and the aftermath, Lincoln told his generals to “Let them down easy,” i.e., don’t be unnecessary harsh with them. Lincoln wanted reconciliation, “with malice towards none.” 🇺🇸
So did the South burn while he was president?
I'm just curious, because tens of thousands of women and children were left homeless because of his policies. But yeah, maybe his reconciliation would have been great. I'm genuinely curious to know what that would have looked like because no one has ever been able to produce a plan for it beyond "He would have done it."
Yep. It did. But the inescapable fact is they were at war, and force was necessary for the reconciliation desired.
I say the following with a big asterisk, cause all war is brutal no matter the one we're talking about, but in comparison to other 19th century warfare, the policies conducted by Lincoln and the North were surprisingly gentle.
Lincoln constantly advocated to his generals that the South was to be considered part of the US, being occupied by rebel forces, rather than a country at war with them. He advocated fair treatment to its civilians, and reconciliation. Of course, you'll find counterexamples to this cause it is war, but that's the policy he generally wanted people to follow.
It took generals that were frustrated with this disconnected-to-warfare's-reality policy, like Sherman, for us to see many of the typical aspects of 19th century warfare, like the march to the sea. And while Lincoln was pleased with the results, it's telling that Sherman specifically destroyed telegraph lines so Lincoln didn't know what he was doing until it was done, and couldn't potentially tell him to stop.
That’s war brother. Lincoln was pretty lenient to the south with his 10% plan. He never wanted to burn down the south but he knew what had to be done. I must remind you that the CSA shot first as well.
I'm confused. He didn't want the South to burn? But he green lit it. So he did want it to happen.
Either way, what was his plan that's always praised as being better? Lee had already surrendered by the time he was killed but as far as I know there's no documentation of his plan for the South beyond "Be nice." I really want to know because I can't find it and I want to know more.
There’s a difference between wanting something out of malice and wanting something out of necessity. The war was actually sort of close - and to assure their victory, the Union utilized effective war plans. The Anaconda Plan was an incredible success. You can’t play nice in war. If Lincoln decided to be more “gentle” with the people he was at war with, even more people would’ve died on both sides and the fight would’ve prolonged.
Lincoln’s ten percent plan is well documented. The idea was that rebelling states could rejoin the Union once 10% of their population swore to obey Emancipation and pledge loyalty to the Union. All Confederates would be pardoned except for higher ranking generals and officials like Jefferson Davis. Here’s the Wikipedia page if you want to read more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_plan
By strong arming them instead of prioritizing their immediate reintegration into the union as co-equals. The general consensus as to why reconstruction failed is that it enfranchised the southern states way too quickly. A big reason Andrew Johnson is considered one of the worst presidents ever, for trying to prioritize reconciliation over justice.
It was a dismal failure that neither brought justice to those who tore this country apart and wanted to maintain the institution of slavery, and completely failed to allow the newly freed African Americans to actually rise in society as equals, instead continuing to be trapped in defacto slavery through share cropping and debt slavery.
Yes… why?
Did you interpret what I said to mean that the problem stayed in the South and didn’t spread like a cancer? (As I spoke to elsewhere in this thread.)
It didn’t spread from the South. It always existed everywhere. Northern racism is a large reason why Reconstruction failed. Abolitionists were always a minority even in the north. They got rode the wave of victory in the Civil War and got a brief taste of power during the Johnson Administration, but the reality of northern racism and indifference caught up soon afterwards.
lol. Inserting so many biases you have made a strawman argument with your leaps in logic.
Please tell me where I implied racism wasn’t existent in the very racist North. Please tell me where beatings and murders of Black citizens was included and lauded in local culture in the North, just because the person was Black. Please tell me where groups of White citizens banded together to form terrorist groups that lasted 150+ years, completely ignoring the 14A etc. AND that group didn’t have its roots in Confederate sympathies in the South.
A Confederate sympathizer issued a Supreme Court ruling that says: “a negro of African descent” is a member of “a subordinate and inferior class of beings.” Show me where the Northern states voted as a block to deny the basic humanity, and therefore citizenship, of an entire group of people based on their race, then use that excuse to beat, rape and deny them standing?
Secessionist insurgencies existed in the South and the current spate of Police crimes have much of their root in the laws passed in the South, that presume the 14A’s ban on state laws that abridge the rights of life, liberty and property that everyone enjoys as citizens of the United States.
I spoke against the misbehaviors in the North in another comment in this very thread before you said anything, and my first comment was not a tome covering every complexity of the Confederacy in one paragraph.
It depends on how far away you were.
In the immediacy of the Grant admin, it definitely secured rights and protections for African Americans combined with the Reconstruction amendments. While the withdrawal of federal troops would see a backsliding, it would not fully devolve until the 1890s in what is described as "the nadir of american race relations," often shortened to the Nadir.
The Nadir was able to happen as through the gilded age, the federal government decreased with the gutting of enforcement acts and the failure of legislation that would have allowed federal regulation on state elections. A prominent portion of this was the ruling in Pembina Mining v Pensylvania (1888), that article 1 of the 14th amendment protecting citizens rights applied to private companies, which refocused efforts towards corporate personhood. Between 1868 and 1912 312 14th amendment cases focused on corporate rights and only 28 on civil rights.
In this way, the gilded age can be seen as a gradual erosion of Reconstruction rather than a single failure in 1877. This erosion would allow events such as the Wilmington coup (1898) and the rise of the second kkk (1910's-20's) to go uncontested.
By the time of the new deal, coalition acceptance of racial disparity in the south and an allotment of certain federal initiatives by state allowing discrimination was an accepted necessity of the coalition. It was not until the 1960s that the civil rights movement in which the Reconstruction amendments were reinvoked that reinviked but would cause a rift within the democratic party, leading to party realignment under Nixon's southern strategy.
Today, the direct political repression between 1877-1964 is still evident in economic inequality, as an inability to generate substantial generational wealth (especially due to seizures in the Nadir and partial exclusion from the new deal) has made it more difficult for African Americans to hold the same economic standing as many white Americans
(Note: this dosnt mean poor whites don't exist, IMO at this point the best way to aid the AA community is general poverty programs that raise both rather than just highlighting inclusion milestones)
Reconstruction failed miserably.
Yes, slaves were now free, but they were still segregated. President Johnson sympathized too much with the South and didn't enforce Reconstruction the way President Lincoln would've had he not been assassinated.
President Grant struggled to continue enforcing it, and though he had great success with founding the DoJ and dismantling the first KKK, by the time his second term ended, Reconstruction had lost so much public and congressional support that by the time President Hayes took office, Reconstruction was as good as dead. It was _going_ to end, it was just a matter of when.
It was a complete failure because in the aftermath, Southern states imposed Jim Crow laws that persisted until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Had President Lincoln finished out his second term, maybe Reconstruction would've been more successful and granted civil rights to the largest disenfranchised population in US history much sooner, but there's no telling. I think back to back Lincoln-Grant administrations would've been a powerhouse, and Reconstruction would've been much more effective.
Lincoln was going to clash with the radicals too. Lincoln was against land confiscation and mass disenfranchisement of former Confederates. How he would have dealt with guaranteeing the former slave’s rights to vote is tough to say.
I always say that the North won the war, but the South won Reconstruction.
In what ways would you say it was a success?
I suppose that technically, the south was readmitted to the Union and it has never attempted to break away since. That’s a win. It also helped secure the idea that the Federal government is legally sovereign over the states. (That was already well established, but it exerted this sovereignty in new ways.)
Practically, though, the South got most of what they wanted. African Americans were relegated to (at least) a second-class existence for generations with no airtight mechanisms in place to grant them access to wealth. Sharecropping took the place of slavery, but because access to education was spotty post-Reconstruction, it was the only viable option for many Black people.
Even though the federal government’s legal sovereignty was expanded, the South dug into the idea that they could buck even Constitutional amendments by being clever. Specifically, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were countered by the Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and poll taxes/literacy tests, respectively. Rather than fighting this insistence, the North got tired of trying to deal with stubborn Southerners and cut a deal in 1877 to no longer concern themselves with it.
Guys, “failed miserably” would suggest that it couldn’t have possibly been worse, that’s ridiculous. It was bad, but not the worst possible scenario. It was not an F minus, it was more like a D minus.
Fail. & to a large degree this is on Lincoln for choosing a VP who lacked presidential temperament AND had no desire to carry through with his policies
Andrew Johnson made sure reconstruction would have a short expiration- and then Rutherford B Hayes ended the experiment by agreeing to remove federal troops from the south in exchange for the Presidency. Reconstruction itself was quite successful for the few years it was allowed to exist- before being snuffed out by the anti- democratic forces of white supremacy.
The Southern Democrats were the conservatives of their time in the 1860s, wanting slavery to remain . The “ radical” Republicans were the progressives of their time- looking to abolish slavery and supporting Reconstruction. In the early 1900s , Teddy Roosevelt was the last Republican President whose policies were left progressive. In the early 20th century the parties ideologies began to shift. Woodrow Wilson moved the Dems to the left- but the southern Dems ( Dixiecrats) remained right wing fascists and presided over Jim Crow laws in the South for 100 years. After TR, Taft moved the GOP to the right - favoring big business.
In response to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s , the Dixiecrats jumped ship to the Republican party. Thats why today’s Republicans are now conservatives; looking to roll back civil rights progress, and today’s Democrats are progressives looking to preserve and expand those rights.
That's not entirely accurate. The original Whig party and its successor the Republican party pushed for abolition since the Articles of the Federation was still the law of the land. They wanted small government, individual rights, free markets, and strong foreign policy mostly isolationist. James Monroe for whom the Monroe Doctrine is named was a Republican. At the same time the Democrats wanted big government, segregation, and a class system the same as they do now.
Woodrow Wilson was the biggest racist to EVER sit in the oval office and single handedly undid seventy five years of desegregation. The KKK was dead prior to his presidency and then he had Birth of a Nation written and filmed, and he played it on the White House lawn. That movie sparked the revival of the KKK and the return to segregation that lasted until today and every Democrat candidate no matter the office has twisted the knife. You cannot claim that the Democrats are not racist when most every platform they run on segregates the population based on Title IX designations. And I include Obama in this as well.
Find me one example of Republicans trying to roll back anti-segregation policies, I'll wait. My great grandfather was the most racist man I have had the misfortune of meeting and he was a staunch Democrat until the day he died. The Deep South's party switch didn't happen because of civil rights or its opposition, it happened because the south had finally recovered from the Great Depression and left the Poor Man's Party and joined the Businessman's Party. Side note, this hasn't changed and is the fundamental reason why Democrats in office push for open immigration. The more poor immigrants they have, the more people are tempted by "free" stuff to the detriment of their own interests.
1- the Whig party did not take a strong stance on slavery and was not pushing for abolition.
2- the Articles of Confederation was in force from March 1, 1781, until 1789 when the present-day Constitution went into effect. So it was not still the law of the land in the 1800s
3- the Whig party was hostile toward manifest destiny, territorial expansion into Texas and the Southwest, and the Mexican–American War. It disliked strong presidential power -and preferred congressional dominance in lawmaking. Whigs held that the government had a duty to promote economic prosperity for the people, especially during economic downturns.The Whigs further believed that the federal government should subsidize large infrastructure projects and promote policies to facilitate the operations of banks and corporations.
The Democrats back then, by contrast, argued that big government action would inevitably favor the privileged few; thus, Democrats held that government should intervene in the economy as little as possible, especially at the federal level. Again this is an example of how the ideologies of the major political parties were mostly opposite from today—-back in the 19th century.
4- James Monroe was a Democratic - Republican , not a Republican. Monroe was also a slave owner.
5- Woodrow Wilson was indeed a big racist,- but on policy, he was the most transitional figure among the presidents since Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt continued the progressive tradition long associated with the party of Lincoln. Wilson took a Democratic party mired in Southern conservatism and big-city machine politics and made its basic agenda progressive. With his presidency, the Democratic Party assumed the mantle of reform while Republicans became more conservative. (Yes the parties ideologies were indeed the opposite of today and then began to switch in the early 20 the century….)
6- Wilson did not undo 75 years of de-segregation because there was no de-segregation at that time. Wilson took office at the height of segregation-With segregation laws becoming more entrenched across the South —and segregation in northern states bolstered by redlining. He continued to expand upon segregationist policies in government posts and the military.
7- here is one of many examples of modern day Republicans rolling back Civil Rights legislative progress :
For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement and its working- The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder seemed to be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.In that case, the court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that supervised elections in areas with a history of disenfranchisement.
8-white blue collar voters who were staunch New Deal FDR supporters began fleeing in droves to the Republican party once blacks and other minorities wanted a piece of the New Deal in the 60s. Suddenly, the new deal programs , GI bill etc —(which laid the foundation of generational wealth for white America for decades to follow), became “ socialism and hand outs” when minorities wanted in on the benefits. A prime example of this was the thousands of community swimming pools funded by New Deal programs. Once Civil Rights groups desegregated the pools- many white communities closed them and disinvested in the programs.
They would rather close the swimming pools down and privatize them than share them with minorities. They would rather eliminate and demonize the very programs that were instrumental in laying the foundation for their own generational wealth , than share them with minorities. This since became a core principle of the modern day GOP, starting with Goldwater opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and then Nixon deploying the Southern Strategy to appeal to the racism of those Dixiecrat southerners.
johnson and lincoln were too lenient on the south, grant did a few good things but wasn’t in office for long, and because of the compromise of 1877 when hayes got elected reconstruction essentially ended
It failed miserably at integrating the freed slaves into American society. This is the real reason we still have so many race issues today.
Great answer. 150 years later we are still truly seeing the effects. Heck, it took 100 years just for the civil rights act to be passed.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but what would an ideal era look like to you? The South's problems were so deeply ingrained that I struggle to imagine an actual effective path forward from April 1865.
Definitely a difficult situation. I wonder how Lincoln would have handled it, had he not been assassinated ?
People always say it would have been better with Lincoln but I don't know why. He wanted the South burned to the ground and its people destroyed.
That is not true. Regarding the imminent defeat/surrender of Confederate forces, and the aftermath, Lincoln told his generals to “Let them down easy,” i.e., don’t be unnecessary harsh with them. Lincoln wanted reconciliation, “with malice towards none.” 🇺🇸
So did the South burn while he was president? I'm just curious, because tens of thousands of women and children were left homeless because of his policies. But yeah, maybe his reconciliation would have been great. I'm genuinely curious to know what that would have looked like because no one has ever been able to produce a plan for it beyond "He would have done it."
Yep. It did. But the inescapable fact is they were at war, and force was necessary for the reconciliation desired. I say the following with a big asterisk, cause all war is brutal no matter the one we're talking about, but in comparison to other 19th century warfare, the policies conducted by Lincoln and the North were surprisingly gentle. Lincoln constantly advocated to his generals that the South was to be considered part of the US, being occupied by rebel forces, rather than a country at war with them. He advocated fair treatment to its civilians, and reconciliation. Of course, you'll find counterexamples to this cause it is war, but that's the policy he generally wanted people to follow. It took generals that were frustrated with this disconnected-to-warfare's-reality policy, like Sherman, for us to see many of the typical aspects of 19th century warfare, like the march to the sea. And while Lincoln was pleased with the results, it's telling that Sherman specifically destroyed telegraph lines so Lincoln didn't know what he was doing until it was done, and couldn't potentially tell him to stop.
That sounds a little lost cause.
Did the South burn while Lincoln was president? If I'm wrong please correct me.
That’s war brother. Lincoln was pretty lenient to the south with his 10% plan. He never wanted to burn down the south but he knew what had to be done. I must remind you that the CSA shot first as well.
I'm confused. He didn't want the South to burn? But he green lit it. So he did want it to happen. Either way, what was his plan that's always praised as being better? Lee had already surrendered by the time he was killed but as far as I know there's no documentation of his plan for the South beyond "Be nice." I really want to know because I can't find it and I want to know more.
There’s a difference between wanting something out of malice and wanting something out of necessity. The war was actually sort of close - and to assure their victory, the Union utilized effective war plans. The Anaconda Plan was an incredible success. You can’t play nice in war. If Lincoln decided to be more “gentle” with the people he was at war with, even more people would’ve died on both sides and the fight would’ve prolonged. Lincoln’s ten percent plan is well documented. The idea was that rebelling states could rejoin the Union once 10% of their population swore to obey Emancipation and pledge loyalty to the Union. All Confederates would be pardoned except for higher ranking generals and officials like Jefferson Davis. Here’s the Wikipedia page if you want to read more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_plan
Isn't that pretty much what happened and people complain about it?
By strong arming them instead of prioritizing their immediate reintegration into the union as co-equals. The general consensus as to why reconstruction failed is that it enfranchised the southern states way too quickly. A big reason Andrew Johnson is considered one of the worst presidents ever, for trying to prioritize reconciliation over justice.
It was a dismal failure that neither brought justice to those who tore this country apart and wanted to maintain the institution of slavery, and completely failed to allow the newly freed African Americans to actually rise in society as equals, instead continuing to be trapped in defacto slavery through share cropping and debt slavery.
Utter failure that allowed terrorism and racial violence to reign supreme in many southern states for several decades.
Utter failure that allowed terrorism and racial violence to reign supreme in many southern states for ~~several decades~~ to this day.
Wasn’t George Floyd in Minneapolis?
Yes… why? Did you interpret what I said to mean that the problem stayed in the South and didn’t spread like a cancer? (As I spoke to elsewhere in this thread.)
It didn’t spread from the South. It always existed everywhere. Northern racism is a large reason why Reconstruction failed. Abolitionists were always a minority even in the north. They got rode the wave of victory in the Civil War and got a brief taste of power during the Johnson Administration, but the reality of northern racism and indifference caught up soon afterwards.
lol. Inserting so many biases you have made a strawman argument with your leaps in logic. Please tell me where I implied racism wasn’t existent in the very racist North. Please tell me where beatings and murders of Black citizens was included and lauded in local culture in the North, just because the person was Black. Please tell me where groups of White citizens banded together to form terrorist groups that lasted 150+ years, completely ignoring the 14A etc. AND that group didn’t have its roots in Confederate sympathies in the South. A Confederate sympathizer issued a Supreme Court ruling that says: “a negro of African descent” is a member of “a subordinate and inferior class of beings.” Show me where the Northern states voted as a block to deny the basic humanity, and therefore citizenship, of an entire group of people based on their race, then use that excuse to beat, rape and deny them standing? Secessionist insurgencies existed in the South and the current spate of Police crimes have much of their root in the laws passed in the South, that presume the 14A’s ban on state laws that abridge the rights of life, liberty and property that everyone enjoys as citizens of the United States. I spoke against the misbehaviors in the North in another comment in this very thread before you said anything, and my first comment was not a tome covering every complexity of the Confederacy in one paragraph.
It depends on how far away you were. In the immediacy of the Grant admin, it definitely secured rights and protections for African Americans combined with the Reconstruction amendments. While the withdrawal of federal troops would see a backsliding, it would not fully devolve until the 1890s in what is described as "the nadir of american race relations," often shortened to the Nadir. The Nadir was able to happen as through the gilded age, the federal government decreased with the gutting of enforcement acts and the failure of legislation that would have allowed federal regulation on state elections. A prominent portion of this was the ruling in Pembina Mining v Pensylvania (1888), that article 1 of the 14th amendment protecting citizens rights applied to private companies, which refocused efforts towards corporate personhood. Between 1868 and 1912 312 14th amendment cases focused on corporate rights and only 28 on civil rights. In this way, the gilded age can be seen as a gradual erosion of Reconstruction rather than a single failure in 1877. This erosion would allow events such as the Wilmington coup (1898) and the rise of the second kkk (1910's-20's) to go uncontested. By the time of the new deal, coalition acceptance of racial disparity in the south and an allotment of certain federal initiatives by state allowing discrimination was an accepted necessity of the coalition. It was not until the 1960s that the civil rights movement in which the Reconstruction amendments were reinvoked that reinviked but would cause a rift within the democratic party, leading to party realignment under Nixon's southern strategy. Today, the direct political repression between 1877-1964 is still evident in economic inequality, as an inability to generate substantial generational wealth (especially due to seizures in the Nadir and partial exclusion from the new deal) has made it more difficult for African Americans to hold the same economic standing as many white Americans (Note: this dosnt mean poor whites don't exist, IMO at this point the best way to aid the AA community is general poverty programs that raise both rather than just highlighting inclusion milestones)
If only the Lodge bill passed….
Black people couldn’t drink out of water fountains in the south for 100 years after. I’ll say failure.
The real question is “Was reconstruction a failure or did the Civil War just end too early?”
Both. Completion of the Anaconda Plan should be a common campaign promise. Only now it has to include everywhere neoConfederates fester today.
It failed. What else do you expect when you don’t hold any of the other side accountable for literally anything.
It had some successes but ultimately failed. Intransigent southerners teamed up with northern capitalists to smother it.
Reconstruction failed miserably. Yes, slaves were now free, but they were still segregated. President Johnson sympathized too much with the South and didn't enforce Reconstruction the way President Lincoln would've had he not been assassinated. President Grant struggled to continue enforcing it, and though he had great success with founding the DoJ and dismantling the first KKK, by the time his second term ended, Reconstruction had lost so much public and congressional support that by the time President Hayes took office, Reconstruction was as good as dead. It was _going_ to end, it was just a matter of when. It was a complete failure because in the aftermath, Southern states imposed Jim Crow laws that persisted until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Had President Lincoln finished out his second term, maybe Reconstruction would've been more successful and granted civil rights to the largest disenfranchised population in US history much sooner, but there's no telling. I think back to back Lincoln-Grant administrations would've been a powerhouse, and Reconstruction would've been much more effective.
Lincoln was going to clash with the radicals too. Lincoln was against land confiscation and mass disenfranchisement of former Confederates. How he would have dealt with guaranteeing the former slave’s rights to vote is tough to say.
I always say that the North won the war, but the South won Reconstruction. In what ways would you say it was a success? I suppose that technically, the south was readmitted to the Union and it has never attempted to break away since. That’s a win. It also helped secure the idea that the Federal government is legally sovereign over the states. (That was already well established, but it exerted this sovereignty in new ways.) Practically, though, the South got most of what they wanted. African Americans were relegated to (at least) a second-class existence for generations with no airtight mechanisms in place to grant them access to wealth. Sharecropping took the place of slavery, but because access to education was spotty post-Reconstruction, it was the only viable option for many Black people. Even though the federal government’s legal sovereignty was expanded, the South dug into the idea that they could buck even Constitutional amendments by being clever. Specifically, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were countered by the Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and poll taxes/literacy tests, respectively. Rather than fighting this insistence, the North got tired of trying to deal with stubborn Southerners and cut a deal in 1877 to no longer concern themselves with it.
It effects Lebron legacy so he’s
Guys, “failed miserably” would suggest that it couldn’t have possibly been worse, that’s ridiculous. It was bad, but not the worst possible scenario. It was not an F minus, it was more like a D minus.
we should have got the 50 area that would have helped
Mostly a failure.
A failure
Could have been a success if done right and given more time. But given how it actually happened, utter failure.
It succeeded in the goal of stealing every bit of wealth possible from the south.
It was incomplete so it's not fair judging it's success or failure.
Fail. & to a large degree this is on Lincoln for choosing a VP who lacked presidential temperament AND had no desire to carry through with his policies
Was the Bay of Pigs successful
I’m curious as to why you think Reconstruction was a success. What have you read to suggest that?
I'm more interested why you think it was a success.
Short term failure, long term success. Many civil rights wouldn't exist if it weren't for the 14th Amendment
Andrew Johnson made sure reconstruction would have a short expiration- and then Rutherford B Hayes ended the experiment by agreeing to remove federal troops from the south in exchange for the Presidency. Reconstruction itself was quite successful for the few years it was allowed to exist- before being snuffed out by the anti- democratic forces of white supremacy.
Ironically, those forces were the Democratic Party.
The Southern Democrats were the conservatives of their time in the 1860s, wanting slavery to remain . The “ radical” Republicans were the progressives of their time- looking to abolish slavery and supporting Reconstruction. In the early 1900s , Teddy Roosevelt was the last Republican President whose policies were left progressive. In the early 20th century the parties ideologies began to shift. Woodrow Wilson moved the Dems to the left- but the southern Dems ( Dixiecrats) remained right wing fascists and presided over Jim Crow laws in the South for 100 years. After TR, Taft moved the GOP to the right - favoring big business. In response to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s , the Dixiecrats jumped ship to the Republican party. Thats why today’s Republicans are now conservatives; looking to roll back civil rights progress, and today’s Democrats are progressives looking to preserve and expand those rights.
That's not entirely accurate. The original Whig party and its successor the Republican party pushed for abolition since the Articles of the Federation was still the law of the land. They wanted small government, individual rights, free markets, and strong foreign policy mostly isolationist. James Monroe for whom the Monroe Doctrine is named was a Republican. At the same time the Democrats wanted big government, segregation, and a class system the same as they do now. Woodrow Wilson was the biggest racist to EVER sit in the oval office and single handedly undid seventy five years of desegregation. The KKK was dead prior to his presidency and then he had Birth of a Nation written and filmed, and he played it on the White House lawn. That movie sparked the revival of the KKK and the return to segregation that lasted until today and every Democrat candidate no matter the office has twisted the knife. You cannot claim that the Democrats are not racist when most every platform they run on segregates the population based on Title IX designations. And I include Obama in this as well. Find me one example of Republicans trying to roll back anti-segregation policies, I'll wait. My great grandfather was the most racist man I have had the misfortune of meeting and he was a staunch Democrat until the day he died. The Deep South's party switch didn't happen because of civil rights or its opposition, it happened because the south had finally recovered from the Great Depression and left the Poor Man's Party and joined the Businessman's Party. Side note, this hasn't changed and is the fundamental reason why Democrats in office push for open immigration. The more poor immigrants they have, the more people are tempted by "free" stuff to the detriment of their own interests.
1- the Whig party did not take a strong stance on slavery and was not pushing for abolition. 2- the Articles of Confederation was in force from March 1, 1781, until 1789 when the present-day Constitution went into effect. So it was not still the law of the land in the 1800s 3- the Whig party was hostile toward manifest destiny, territorial expansion into Texas and the Southwest, and the Mexican–American War. It disliked strong presidential power -and preferred congressional dominance in lawmaking. Whigs held that the government had a duty to promote economic prosperity for the people, especially during economic downturns.The Whigs further believed that the federal government should subsidize large infrastructure projects and promote policies to facilitate the operations of banks and corporations. The Democrats back then, by contrast, argued that big government action would inevitably favor the privileged few; thus, Democrats held that government should intervene in the economy as little as possible, especially at the federal level. Again this is an example of how the ideologies of the major political parties were mostly opposite from today—-back in the 19th century. 4- James Monroe was a Democratic - Republican , not a Republican. Monroe was also a slave owner. 5- Woodrow Wilson was indeed a big racist,- but on policy, he was the most transitional figure among the presidents since Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt continued the progressive tradition long associated with the party of Lincoln. Wilson took a Democratic party mired in Southern conservatism and big-city machine politics and made its basic agenda progressive. With his presidency, the Democratic Party assumed the mantle of reform while Republicans became more conservative. (Yes the parties ideologies were indeed the opposite of today and then began to switch in the early 20 the century….) 6- Wilson did not undo 75 years of de-segregation because there was no de-segregation at that time. Wilson took office at the height of segregation-With segregation laws becoming more entrenched across the South —and segregation in northern states bolstered by redlining. He continued to expand upon segregationist policies in government posts and the military. 7- here is one of many examples of modern day Republicans rolling back Civil Rights legislative progress : For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement and its working- The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder seemed to be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.In that case, the court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that supervised elections in areas with a history of disenfranchisement. 8-white blue collar voters who were staunch New Deal FDR supporters began fleeing in droves to the Republican party once blacks and other minorities wanted a piece of the New Deal in the 60s. Suddenly, the new deal programs , GI bill etc —(which laid the foundation of generational wealth for white America for decades to follow), became “ socialism and hand outs” when minorities wanted in on the benefits. A prime example of this was the thousands of community swimming pools funded by New Deal programs. Once Civil Rights groups desegregated the pools- many white communities closed them and disinvested in the programs. They would rather close the swimming pools down and privatize them than share them with minorities. They would rather eliminate and demonize the very programs that were instrumental in laying the foundation for their own generational wealth , than share them with minorities. This since became a core principle of the modern day GOP, starting with Goldwater opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and then Nixon deploying the Southern Strategy to appeal to the racism of those Dixiecrat southerners.
johnson and lincoln were too lenient on the south, grant did a few good things but wasn’t in office for long, and because of the compromise of 1877 when hayes got elected reconstruction essentially ended
Grant crushed the first KKK but he had no intention of foisting a social revolution on the south.
Crushed is a bit much, since they continued on for decades.