Canceling the South

Wash Park Prophet, alter-ego of the Turtle, proposes the what-if of Super Radical Reconstruction. Like: maybe Johnson is killed alongside Lincoln, and only Seward is left alongside War-Secretary Stanton and the likes of him. Basically WPP proposes swift executions for most of the CSA's élites and Southern Baptist clergy; the rest get disenfranchisement. If CSA assassinates USA civilian leaders; USA can do whatever to CSA leaders.

The Surratt/Booth plot was, perhaps, a case for laws-of-war, given that Lee's army had surrendered but that other armies - Native troops and Texians - had not. WPP is considering the postwar. Some of the CSA's top men had done what we'd call war-crime; usually cited here, Forrest at Fort Pillow. Sherman did some war-crime at Atlanta, himself; but Sherman, like, won. Vae victis!

Forrest, who had a religious conversion after the war, is getting the rope anyway; G-d might forgive him but WPP won't. WPP might find some space for general Longstreet who at least tried to emancipate slaves for the war-effort, and went on an apology-tour after the war; but, even if so, these exceptions will be public, rare, and spread over time and space.

And we are not talking here about what Israel plans for Gaza. WPP wrote all that in September. To be understood is that the Turtle hates the Right's voters... a lot. He imputes the foulest motives for Trump's voters and we're not even that far Right. Just that Trump brought pro-family and tradition-minded voters to the bargaining table, means these voters' concerns were validated. To WPP that is bad enough. As WPP is pondering mass graves for the CSA and the old SBC, I see the shadow of similar for Red State politicians and the modern SBC.

Anyway: we lately have the example of "Hayti" when we consider a territory purged of its élites. I don't remember the site but I did remember that Wilson ordered the US to occupy the island's western third in 1915. Wilson, whom I doubt enjoys the endorsement of WPP, found Hayti to have attracted (very-gradually) a German élite. Someone had to do the trade, and Hayti did retain some Poles from the revolution; Germans, meanwhile, could be found who were Catholic and able to deal with Poles. The US occupation laid down some infrastructure but at the cost of removing a more-or-less organic educated subset. In the US wake, came Duvaliers.

Back on this side of the Gulf we own some eyewitness accounts of the "prostrate states". It used to be that these accounts were collected into "Dunning School" histories. In WPP's world, any local making sympathetic record of those years would probably suffer military prosecution. We also have Nordhoff, from the North, however; who recorded gross mismanagement and crimes in New Orleans.

(I'd quibble with WPP whether Reconstruction would have allowed the Native tribes back. They'd supported the CSA and had slaves too. On the other hand: maybe Reconstruction is to force as much diversity and equity upon the local whites as possible.)

Without a local white (or Cherokee) élite, I expect the prostrate states to fall into chaos. That's possibly part of the plan; I've seen maps where Reconstruction assumes "state suicide" and redraws borders. To that, as Sam Houston said of an earlier crisis - "but I doubt it". More likely we'd see mass migrations out of the whole military-occupied region - and not only whites. Would the North stand for the refugee influx? - would the US Army? What about foreign navies? Can disenfranchisement from Louisiana carry over in practice to disenfranchisement in New Mexico Territory, or even in Missouri and Kentucky?

Around the time the US is facing chaos in this scenario, which I peg at 1866ish, we must note that Mexico is facing chaos. Juarez' term had run out whilst he was in exile; he'd come back and made himself Presidente anyway. Up here in El Norte we could see a junta in DC, of Seward and Stanton and probably general Grant.

I don't think, in this contrafactual, the South is getting reconstructed to be a harmony of multiracial Quakers. I think it's getting mass graves. That's good enough, for some.

BACKDATE 11/23: It can be revealed - I had the week off this week. So: I can fill in the gaps.