re: #111 GeneJockey

That’s the thing, though - it never was a possibility. The economy of the South was built on free labor. Even after slavery was abolished, the quasi-slavery of sharecropping combined with segregation and oppression took its place. The South would not have accepted it, and would not have stopped.

Honestly, as I get older, I think more and more that the South got off far too easy.

The options available at the end of the civil war weren’t good. The military occupation of the South was known by all to be essentially temporary, so it had no ability to make lasting change. The North was also compromised by its own issues of race and class.

So I think it was pretty much inevitable that the Confederacy would get off lightly.

However, I think the verdict of history can remain very harsh —- i.e., IMO the Confederacy/Slavery is the most concentrated locus of pure evil in US history.

That is the turd the present day neo-Confederates in the GOP are trying to polish. They really are trying to brand themselves as the party of Evil.