On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 01:04:54PM -0400, SA wrote:
>
> Yes. The Republicans' intention was to revolutionize the South, not
> to leave behind a Jim Crow state. (C. Vann Woodward showed decades
> ago that Jim Crow only began after the crushing of Populism, in
> 1896-1900.) It turned out, though, that they had underestimated how
> revolutionary they needed to be to achieve their ends - e.g., they
> would have needed to redistribute property. Nothing in the American
> political tradition prepared them to do any such thing, so while a
> few of the most advanced Republicans supported such radical steps,
> the bulk of Northern opinion felt that with Reconstruction they had
> stumbled a "quagmire" and that they needed an "exit strategy."
>
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com