The uncomfortable truths of reconstruction

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The uncomfortable truths of reconstruction

February 8, 2018 Columnists , Mike Scruggs  1044 Views

By Mike Scruggs – I am a Republican and have been a Republican County Chairman in two states, but if the Republican Party is going to be the party of the people, it must be the party of truth. We must avoid whitewashed versions of history. The first test of all politics should be truth.

The South was as devastated by the Un-Civil War of 1861 to 1865 as much as any nation in the annals of warfare. By the end of the war one out of every four white men had been killed or died of wounds or disease. Over 40 percent of private property including homes, businesses livestock, and crops had been destroyed. In South Carolina, where Sherman’s men had burned the capitol city of Columbia, over 50 percent of private property was destroyed. Most of this property damage was deliberately inflicted on the civilian population to deny the Confederate Army the logistical means of resistance, but also to demoralize their families and supporters at home. It was ordered in cold calculation by Northern political and military leadership, but often executed with self-righteous religious zeal or criminal abandon. At the end of the war at least 50,000 homeless and displaced refugees, mostly former slaves, died of famine and disease. Neither Christian teachings nor modern Geneva Conventions condone such total war. Reconstruction was an extension of that total war by political means   

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Union league terrorism: Reconstruction series: Part 2

February 15, 2018 Asheville , Columnists , Mike Scruggs , News Stories 

Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. House of Representatives

Radical Republican from Pennsylvania

1849-1853 and 1859-1868

“The Boss of America” after Lincoln Assassination

By Mike Scruggs – Most people today know something about the Ku Klux Klan, but very few are familiar with the Union League of America, also called the Loyal League. In fact, the birth and growth of the Klan was largely a response to Union League bullying, violence, and murder. The Union League perpetrated far more violence against both blacks and whites in the post Civil War Reconstruction years of 1865 to 1877 than the Klan. Why has the violence of the Union League been shoved deep into the memory hole of history? It is because the Union League was essentially a quasi-federal agency carrying out the policies of Reconstruction. The factual history of this political despotism, corruption, and violence is a moral and political embarrassment, which the powerful guardians of counterfactual political narratives have relentlessly sought to suppress. This is even truer in today’s social and political climate of hysterical political correctness that chains modern academics and media within narrow bounds of subject, reasoning, and speech.   http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2018/02/15/union-league-terrorism-reconstruction-series-part-2/

 

 

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Part Three: Series on Reconstruction 1865-1877: The Kirk-Holden War in North Carolina: Plundering the South

March 1, 2018 Columnists , Mike Scruggs 

William Woods Holden, North Carolina Governor circa. 1870

By Mike Scruggs – A very stringent anti-Klan law was passed by the North Carolina legislature under the direction of Governor William Holden in January of 1870. This was in response to Radical Republican leadership in Washington. True to Washington Radical Republican despotism, it gave the Governor power to declare counties in a state of insurrection and supersede practically all laws and Constitutional rights in its prosecution. Despite a vigorous attempt to enforce the law, Klan activity increased and a top black activist and leader of the League in Alamance County was found hanging in a tree. Shortly thereafter, Senator John Stephens, a ranking white operative for Governor Holden, seeking evidence for Klan prosecutions, visited a Caswell County Union League meeting. There he handed to each of about twenty members a box of matches with the suggestion that they should be put to good use burning barns. Barns were especially important to Southern farmers. Without a barn a familys livelihood was severely threatened. The next night seven barns, a row of houses, and the tobacco crops of several prominent citizens were burned.  http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2018/03/01/part-three-series-on-reconstruction-1865-1877-the-kirk-holden-war-in-north-carolina-plundering-the-south/

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Part 4 of a Series on Reconstruction: Economic and Political Tyranny

March 1, 2018 Columnists , Mike Scruggs

Library of Congress photo circa. 1860-1880.

By Mike Scruggs – The high tariff policies that touched off Southern Secession in 1860-61 were instituted and kept in place until 1913. As feared, these high tariffs increased the costs of living and business in the South. This put its chief export, cotton, at a competitive disadvantage with Brazilian, Indian, and Egyptian cotton. Ninety-five percent of U.S. tax revenues came from tariffs, of which over 80 percent was collected in the South, and over 75 percent was used to enrich and subsidize Northern industry and build Northern infrastructure.

One asset the South had left after the war despite all the destruction was five million bales of cotton. Prices were also at an all time high of 50 cents to a dollar per pound. The North confiscated three million bales of this cotton on the grounds of its association with owners who had previously sold cotton to the Confederate government. Cotton raised by slaves was also subjected to a 25 percent tax. It was up to the owners of cotton to prove the absence of any Confederate or slave taint, so U. S. Treasury agents frequently made some arrangements to clear the cotton by some means of bribery. Many Treasury agents were racketeers, using threats of total confiscation   http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2018/03/01/part-4-of-a-series-on-reconstruction-economic-and-political-tyranny/

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Friday, March 9, 2018

Part 5 of a Series on Reconstruction: The rise of the KKK

 

The original KKK did not use Confederate flags. The second KKK (1915-1944) became a national organization following the movie, Birth of a Nation, and peaked ca 1925 with 3-6 million members and used U.S. flags. Photo: Washington DC KKK parade 1926. Current KKK membership is estimated to be less than 8,000.

 Christmas Eve of 1865 was not a time of joy in Pulaski, Tennessee. But six young Confederate veterans meeting in a law office decided to lift the spirits of that town by forming a club or fraternity. 

 Five of these six were Confederate officers during the war. Four of them were to become lawyers, one a circuit court clerk, and one a newspaper editor. Their first objective was to have some fun. To that end, they devised the rituals of a secret fraternal society with mysterious code words, elaborate titles, and costume disguises. Starting with the Greek word for circle, kuklos, they came up with the name, Ku Klux, and then added Klan because they were all of Scotch-Irish descent. Their costume regalia for themselves and their horses was made up of available bed sheets. The next week at dark, they rode into town to introduce their new club, show off their mysterious regalia, and amuse and serenade sweethearts and families. It was a roaring social success.

 

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Posted by Brock Townsend at Friday, March 09, 2018