RECONSTRUCTION - America's Tragedy

      DISCLAIMER:  The SCV is an historical honour society, a patriotic civic organisation, devoted to memorialising its members' Confederate ancestors.  The SCV disowns and execrates both racism and ethnic superiority in any form.  To assist researchers and enquirers in studies about the War for Southern Independence we offer the following as a help to understand the complex issues involved.  We cherish freedom of thought, honest enquiry, and liberty of conscience, wherein we may differ with others in interpreting the events of that War, and the ensuing "reconstruction era."  Please understand that terms and phrases used in that time carry differing connotations today.  Thus it would be wrong to judge that era by today's notions.  The Confederate military was fully integrated.  Some 65,000 Blacks served honourably, wearing the grey, as did 12,000 native American Indians, some 11,000 Jews, about 10,000 Hispanics, close to 30,000 Northerner's, and about  25,000 foreigners, plus three known Chinese.  We honour all these Confederate soldiers.  We are not about race, nor are we about hate.  We are all about heritage.

      As SCV members we love the United States of America, just as the men of our parent organisation, the United Confederate Veterans, did.  Many of those honourable men served as US soldiers after the awful conflict had ended, and many SCV members have served honourably as US military personnel, since then, and indeed, many SCV members are now serving in the US military around the world.  The SCV, therefore, energetically denounces any implication that our organisation means disloyalty, exclusivism, or racial, or ethnic superiority to any degree, or as judged by any rational standard.  Southerners of all races share a unique history and heritage, and we strive toward mutual appreciation, understanding, commonality, and mutual respect.  We urge you, if you have ancestry who served honourably as Confederate soldiers or sailors, to join with us in defending their remarkable record as the best citizen-army ever; defending home and hearth against overwhelming invasion forces for four long years before they were conquered.  Their cause of self-government according to Scriptural principles, self-determination, and liberty of conscience is not lost, as long as it lives in one heart who looks prayerfully, hopefully, to God as the Author and Source of true freedom and genuine responsibility.

     Reconstruction might well be called a counter-revolution, in that, it specifically, definitely, and with intentionality, reversed America's first revolution and what it had achieved.  The outcome of America's secession from Great Britain, following the Revolutionary War, was to place government back on the plane of accountability to those it served.  But Reconstruction was a comprehensive counter to all that was gained at independence, re-interpreting government as supreme and tolerating no dissent, with dissenters being equated with outlaws and traitors, and disloyal thereto, with dire consequences for such dissenters.

     The virtual holocaust of the War itself, with its enormous catalogue of heinous crimes, and gross sins, committed against the Southern people, which have never been publicly owned, would not be surpassed by the more fiendishly comprehensive war of reconstruction, waged not only against the prostrated South, but indeed, against all of America.  We hope that the following materials and resources will help foster true reconciliation, that can only come by an authentically honest and dispassionate assessment and evaluation of the real history, leaving aside the nonsense that passes for revisionism, and partizan efforts to justify America's war against its own citizens that sums up the awful War against constitutionalism and personal accountability.

     Reconstruction did not really end in 1877, with the end of its open manifestations, since the radicalism which spawned it merely evolved into new forms, more subtle yet more dangerous, corrupting everything it happened to touch.  To understand the two wars waged against the South, the one commonly, but wrongly, termed the "civil war" and the other euphemistically named "reconstruction" the enquirer is presented with the following:  "In the minds of Southerners to reconstruct meant to put the Union of states back as it was before the war.  This understanding might well be expected of them, the most conservative of Americans, but it ignored realities it were best Southerners had recognized.  The dominant political element in the North soon showed it had no intentions.  Since no armistice was signed or treaty of peace made, it believed that there were no terms of surrender, either stated or implied, which it need respect.  Northerners would sieze this opportunity not only to remake Southerners in the many respects that had no direct relationship to the war; they would also remake the Union by not only depriving all states of much of their power and bestowing it upon the central government.  Here was the fruition of a growth in extremism evident in the North long before the war broke out, but now made easy by that war having been fought.  This movement was not only concerned with the powers of government and its subserviency to the expanding economic interests of individuals but it was also a faint glimmering of a changing world, reflected most vividly in English liberalism and French radicalism....No amount of revisionism can write away the grievous mistakes made in this abnormal period of American history."  (E. Merton Coulter, The South During Reconstruction 1865-1877, Authors preface).

     To most Southerner's "reconstruction" meant, though having lost their cherished cause of attaining their collective independence, they nevertheless would reluctantly re-enter the Union and attempt to achieve their constitutional vision through that Union.  Short-sightedness would not foresee that one effect of their defeat would be their disfranchisement.  "The surrender was a term early used by Southerners to mark the end of their efforts to set up a new nation,...They were now ready to resume their position in the old government, and it is a remarkable fact that not one Southerner thereafter took up arms against the United States....It could not be expected [however] that Southerners would give up their manly feelings or their innermost convictions; they had never thought of surrendering their honor [based as it was upon their understanding of their relationship to God and government].  (E. Merton Coulter, ibid., pgs 23, 24, 25). 

     It is hoped that the following resources will be useful to all researchers and enquirers in gaining an appreciation and understanding of the Southern perspective of the "reconstruction era" and its practical import for the Southern people, and a truer comprehension of the War preceding it.  It ought to be noted that many of these resources are authored by Northerner's.  Many of the most dangerous features and phenomena of that quasi-totalitarian period in our history remain codified as legislation and judicial decisions which impact injuriously all Americans to this very day.  Perhaps the best result may be to some to discern that this gory conflict did have a religious and theological basis, and that maybe right questions will arise as to man's proper relationship to God, and his proper role as His creature, as regards government and its inherent human limitations, and the immortal question of equity as defined in His holy Word. 

     The War Between the States:  America's Uncivil War by John J. Dwyer.

     The South Under Siege 1830-2000:  A history of the relations between the North and the South by Frank Conner.

     America's Caesar by Greg Loren Durand.

     Federal Usurpation by President Franklin Pierce.

     The True Nature and Character of our Government by Abel Parker Upshur.

     The Unwritten South by J. Clarence Stonebraker.

     Dixie After the War:  Eyewitness Accounts of Reconstruction by Myrta Lockett Avary.

     Destruction and Reconstruction by Richard Taylor.

     The Republic of Republics by Bernard Janin Sage.

     The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798:  An Historical Study by Ethelbert Dudley Warfield (this is an online resource).

     A Constitutional History of Secession by John Remington Graham.

     Free, Sovereign and Independent States:  The intended Meaning of the American Constitution by John Remington Graham.

     Prisoner of State by Dennis A. Mahoney (First-hand account of one of the nearly 30,000 Northerner's incarcerated unlawfully by Lincoln's regime).

     Crimes of the Civil War and Curse of the Funding System by Henry Clay Dean.

     War Crimes Against Southern Civilians by Walter Brian Cisco.

     Reconstruction:  Political and Economic;  1865-1877 by William Archibald Dunning.

     Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky by E. Merton Coulter.

     William G. Brownlow by E. Merton Coulter.  (A well-researched study of Tennessee's Reconstruction evils).

     Reclaiming the American Revolution by Richard N. Rosenfeld.

     State Documents on Federal Relations:  The States and the united States by Herman V. Ames.

     Redeeming American Democracy by Marshall L. Derosa.

     One Nation, Indivisible?  A Study of Secession and the Constitution by Robert F. Hawes.

     Blood Money:  The Civil War and the Federal Reserve by John Remington Graham.

     The Tragic Era:  The Revolution After Lincoln by Claude G. Bowers.

     When In The Course of Human Events by Charles Adams.

     Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving free Men: A History of the American Civil war by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel.

We also highly recommend the excellent web site:  http://1898wilmington.com as a well researched and scholarly treatment on various aspects of the War and Reconstruction, and how those things still impact us adversely, injuriously to this very day.