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    GoneIn60MinutesHamilton Nolan
    4/28/16 4:36pm

    It could have been even better if Reconstruction had been allowed to complete the process of transformation. Too bad politics got in the way. Only recently has Thaddeus Stevens and the other “Radical Republicans” started to be viewed as the heroes they were.

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      Masshole JamesGoneIn60Minutes
      4/28/16 4:43pm

      We should never have readmitted them back into the Union. That was the biggest mistake the North made. They should have been kept an occupied territory.

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      911DucktailMasshole James
      4/28/16 4:49pm

      meh, hindsight is 20/20 and at the time Johnson not only believed in states rights (in its actual, non RWNJ iteration) but actively took the belief that the south needed to heal economically first. I’ll give you that they shouldnt have overturned the land given to the freeman via the Freedmans Bureau though - that act alone would have some effects on the resultant black codes if the now freed slaves were also official land owners in the south

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    Hang The HaberdasherHamilton Nolan
    4/28/16 4:39pm

    Jesus Christ, now the Civil War has been revisioned into a war against the establishment. Somebody stop the planet, I want off.

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      VanNostrandHang The Haberdasher
      4/28/16 4:46pm

      We’re standing up against the top 1% of the top 3% of the top 8% of the top .05%!

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      SungodlyHang The Haberdasher
      4/28/16 4:47pm

      That’s a deliberate misreading. Upsetting the establishment was a side-effect of the war. I don’t know how he could have been clearer on that point.

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    The Noble RenardHamilton Nolan
    4/28/16 4:40pm

    Well yeah, especially because a whopping 2% of the entire population was killed, and the South took massive economic losses through the blockading of its ports, Sherman’s March, and other violence. It’s also an interesting thing to note that not all of this had to do with violence or with economic pressure at all. Somewhat more importantly for the wealth of the elite, plantation owners could no longer count slaves as an “asset” on their balance sheets:

    The drop was especially pronounced for personal property; above the 90th percentile, southern wealth holders experienced a 90 percent drop in the value of personal property

    As the paper itself says, “personal property” includes slaves. So some of the massive drop was literally the Emancipation Proclamation wiping out the value of that “asset” down to zero with the stroke of a pen.

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      Darius Miles in "The Perfect Score"The Noble Renard
      4/28/16 4:51pm

      Have you read This Republic of Suffering? Great book about how the Civil War killed so many people that it literally changed the national attitude towards death.

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      The Noble RenardDarius Miles in "The Perfect Score"
      4/28/16 4:54pm

      No, but it looks fantastic. I’ll check it out!

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    Sid and FinancyHamilton Nolan
    4/28/16 4:41pm

    Hmm. There’s this other guy who likes everything gilded running for President . . .

    Donald Tecumseh Trump?

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      waspypantsSid and Financy
      4/28/16 4:57pm

      Except Sherman emphatically shut down any talk of his ever running for President.

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      Sid and Financywaspypants
      4/28/16 5:04pm

      Really? Are you saying he made a Shermanesque statement? Well I’ll be damned.

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    EtruscanRaiderHamilton Nolan
    4/28/16 5:37pm

    And here we see the genesis of “The Lost Cause.” The people who wrote all the diatribes against the brutish yankees and their colored accomplices were the ones who’d had their crowns jostled but who still had plenty of resources to reorganize their less fortunate countrymen into a violent, hateful mob.

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      absolut-alcoholicHamilton Nolan
      4/28/16 5:01pm

      So what you’re telling me is this whole Captain America: Civil War thing should improve economic mobility everywhere because it has a worldwide release?

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        Netflix and ShillHamilton Nolan
        4/28/16 4:53pm

        The paper says slaves made up three fifths of the southern wealth. Based on that, plus the fact that we no longer have slavery, are the findings here really applicable to any other scenario?

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          bassguitarheroHamilton Nolan
          4/28/16 5:52pm

          Wealthy white slaveowners in the south were also given reparations by the government for the loss of their slaves, so they had a lot going in their favor.

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            thatguywhodidthatthingHamilton Nolan
            4/28/16 5:25pm

            So did WWII
            #thankshitler

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              GeorgeGeoffersonLivesthatguywhodidthatthing
              4/29/16 1:26am

              Who is “Shitler?” ;)

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              thatguywhodidthatthingGeorgeGeoffersonLives
              4/29/16 11:23am

              ...

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            MarilandicaHamilton Nolan
            4/28/16 4:57pm

            Uh, I think you miss the point. The redistribution of wealth in the south was all about the elimination of slavery. The vast majority of southern wealth was tied up in the hideous ownership of human beings. It’s not Civil War per se that triggered the redistribution, it’s the elimination of slavery. I would guess that civil war more generally (as opposed to the American Civil War specifically) has not historically been a great redistributer.

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