re: #38 Ian G.

Scott Terry is a good example of why I think we didn’t go far enough after the Civil War. We should have handled it the way we handled post-war Germany and Japan, with hangings handed out to the leadership, and a total cleansing of the culture that produced the racial supremacist violence that animated that society.

If only Thaddeus Stevens had been VP instead of Andrew Johnson….

While I think some leadership hangings could have been justified post civil war, the idea of forcibly reconstructing the South on non-racist lines is an unrealistic anachronism. If nothing else, there was not nearly enough political will in the North for that.

Also, the US Confederacy was much more deeply entrenched in society than either the Nazis or the Japanese militarists. Removing that aspect of the US south by military force is also unrealistic.