Reconstruction: The Second Civil War (Part 1) [View all]

[RainDog]

Part 2:

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Slavery By Another Name (the 1900s)

http://video.pbs.org/video/2176766758/

This is a long overlooked part of American history. After the assassination of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson's concern was to make sure white solidarity between North and South was reasserted - and Johnson, from Tennessee, cared little to nothing for the circumstances of those who had been held in slavery. Johnson opposed the freaking 14th amendment (states rights and all that.)

Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction Era wanted to thoroughly destroy the power structure that had made up the south before the Civil War. I agree. Ex-confederates should've never been allowed back into the Federal govt. They should've been executed as traitors, as the abolitionists wanted.

The sad irony, of course, is that it took another president by the name of Johnson to pass a civil rights act to undo what racists had undone over nearly a hundred years. He said Democrats had lost the south for a generation with his act. How repulsive that his prediction was correct.