General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The South was not sufficiently punished after the war [View all]thucythucy
(8,069 posts)of the sort Lincoln was advocating shortly before his murder--"Forty Acres and a mule" for emancipated blacks and poor landless whites--along with treason trials of the major leadership (who would then lose their property after conviction to provide land for the landless), not to mention universal public education and universal suffrage (for men anyway), which was what the Freedman's Bureau tried to do, I think yes, this country would today be in a much better condition than it is right now.
Speculation of course. But unless you think the Nuremburg trials somehow made postwar Germany worse, I don't see how trying the major traitors in open court--allowing them due process--would have harmed anyone but the racist, slave owning, KKK organizing elite.