i need details message,please!

Alternative history, especially where the Confederacy defeats the Union, is a popular topic. It's been done here a number of times over the past several years. Find and read some of those old threads, and then if you still have questions/comments bring'em on.

Re: i need details message,please!


After the North won the war, a military district was created in the South. Lincoln had been the President of the United States, but after he was assassinated, he was succeeded by his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, who was a southerner from Tennessee. Johnson appointed George Henry Thomas, a southerner from Virginia who had remained loyal to the United States, as the Governor of the Military District of the South. The hope was that the South would be reconstructed without violence and that the resentments of southerners could be assuaged and a new beginning made. This hope failed, though. Radicals in Congress didn't like Johnson and they didn't like Thomas. They got rid of Thomas by putting pressure on Johnson, and the Military District of the South was eliminated. The House of Representatives tried to get rid of Johnson by impeaching him (the reasons are complex--Johnson wanted to get rid of the Secretary of War, and the Congress passed a public law that he could not be removed from office without their approval; Johnson fired the old boy, and he was impeached (indicted) by the House; but he was acquitted in the Senate, so he remained in office).

When Johnson's term was finished in 1868, Ulysses Grant was elected. Grant had commanded the Federal armies from 1863 to the end of the war, and was very popular. Grant dismantled the Freedman's Bureau, run by the former General O. O. Howard, and intended to help the former slaves. Grant had a policy of not interferring in southern affairs. White southerners soon took control of their own state governments, and set to work to keep the black, former slaves "in their place." They passed laws to segregate blacks from whites, and to control their activities and to keep them from voting. These were known as Jim Crow laws.

It required a century, and much blood, violence, heartache and grief for the South to regain its economic stability and to end racial discrimination. It was not until the 1960s that the civil rights movement began to end racial discrimination; it was not until the 1980s that the South began to "rise" again economically. Many of the racial problems remain a problem to this day. To this day, many Northerners look down on Southerners and consider them ignorant and bigoted. That may be true, but there are just as many ignorant and bigoted people in the North. Wounds like this take a long time to heal. This wound has not healed yet.

i need details message,please!
The wounds have not healed yet, partially because it many southerners feel the romance of the "Lost Cause", and can't let go. To face reality, and recognize that North and South should be united as one country, is a popular, if impractical, emotion throughout the so-called "red" states.

i need details message,please!
I tried posting a major correction to my response: in short, I should have said something along the lines of "...To fail to face reality..."

Unfortunately, what came out was exacly the opposite of what I meant. Oh dear, oh dear!