The relevance of a doctrine's being

[Douglas Laycock]

         The headline version is that Reconstruction ended when Hayes 
promised to pull out the remaining troops as part of the deal that ended 
the deadlocked Hayes-Tilden election in 1876.  But that was just the final 
curtain.

         Reconstruction had become deeply unpopular, in the North as well 
as in the South.  The North was tired of occupying the South, the way many 
Americans today are tired of or worried about occupying Iraq, with the 
additional factor that the repeated involvement of armed troops to protect 
voting rights and seat legislators seemed to threaten military dictatorship 
in place of democracy.  Yet blacks could not vote in many places, and black 
legislators could not be seated, without the protection of armed troops.

         The bottom line was that the Democrats swept the Congressional 
elections of 1874, and the Republicans needed a new issue.  One of the 
issues they chose was withholding money from Catholic schools; that is why 
the failed Blaine Amendment was offered in 1876.  Troops were coming home 
even before Hayes made his deal.

         Maybe Lincoln's leadership would have made some difference, but 
the fundamental problem was probably insoluble:  the North lacked the will 
to enforce racial equality in the South over the long run.  The South could 
win by merely persisting; the North could win only by an extraordinary 
effort.  And most of the North wasn't that fired up about racial equality 
anyway.

At 04:37 PM 3/22/2004 -0500, Mark Graber wrote:
>How much would malice toward the leaders of the Confederacy matter.  The
>Republican theory was that secession was sponsored by a few hotheads,
>and that lots of southern whites were really nascent Republicans.  If
>this was right, then maybe stringing up a few leaders would have worked.
>  But isn't it the case that a) you didn;t need to string up a few
>leaders to prevent a secession reprise, since that was settled at
>appomattox (spelling approximate), and b) you would need more like a
>KILLING FIELDS scenario to promote racial equality in the south, given
>how deeply entrenched and popular white supremacy was in that region.
>Alternatively, and more seriously than stringing up a few people, the
>better strategy might have been to disarm all Confederates, arm all
>former slaves and put them completely in control for a generation or so.
>  But hang the 50 people of your choice, and I don't think history is
>much different.
>
>Mark A. Graber
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Douglas Laycock
University of Texas Law School
727 E. Dean Keeton St.
Austin, TX  78705
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         dlaycock at mail.law.utexas.edu