Thankfully, a lot of people in the Southern states today believe in conservative small government, but a state-enforced system of Jim Crow was the exact opposite of limited government. Michael Zak’s “Back to Basics for the Republican Party” has a good concise account of the Reconstruction age. A lot of liberal writers try to twist the facts of that to their own ends, but Mr Zak’s account connects the Republicans of that age to limited government free-market principles of today.
“but Mr Zak’s account connects the Republicans of that age to limited government free-market principles of today.”
Are you drunk? The Radical Republicans passed three separate Reconstruction acts to ensure the looting of the Southern states. There was nothing about “limited government” in these acts. President Johnson vetoed these acts but was overuled by Thadeus Stevens and his gang of thieving radicals to “punish” the southern states.
The Radical Republicans insisted on military rule and the subsequent thievery in the south, in direct contradiction of President Lincoln’s wishes to bring the southern states back into Union after the war.
How about you tell everyone the “conditions” the Radical Republicans demanded before allowing the southern states to rejoin the union.
Thank you. The Democrats’ slavery and Jim Crow regimes were the nation’s biggest Big Government programs ever.