[TexConfederate1861]

Probably liked it better than starving during Reconstruction....

[M. Espinola]

"Probably liked it better than starving during Reconstruction....

Reconstruction would have worked well if the ex-confederates would have allowed it and not reestablish the many years of a system very close to slavery under the animal like terrorism of the Klan & Jim Crow 'laws', not ending until forced.

The best option was leaving the South, as so many ended up doing.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

A lot less Southerners died in the immediate aftermath of the war due to the benevolent surrender terms established by Grant and Sherman. Yet we rarely hear gratitude from latter-day Confederate partisans for these actions. And we only hear ridiculous denigration of Abraham Lincoln from the Lew Rockwell crowd, but never a recognition that Abraham Lincoln's path would probably have been even more gentle than what got Johnson in trouble.

I'm not fan of the attitude of haters like Wade, but in practice, the Reconstruction was a more gentle fate than most crushed rebellions have faced throughout history. Much of the outcry over the years is because the target of Reconstruction included one of the most petulant crybaby classes the nation has ever seen, the Southern planter slaveowner aristocracy which is the mother of all divisive complaining special interests that we see today. The forerunner of all those who place loyalty to the imagined interests of their own subgroup above the interests of the Union. It's a tragedy that so many good men, North and South, died because these privileged wanted to create an expanding slave empire.