The Battle for Truth on the Reconstruction Era
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Will Truth Crushed to the Ground Rise Again?
Part 7 of 7 of a Series on Reconstruction 1865-1877

The study of the causes and conduct of the “Civil War” and the Reconstruction era that followed from 1865 to 1877 is still governed by the partisan myths of the Union victors and modern political correctness. But “Truth crushed to the earth” (William Cullen Bryant) is still the truth and “shall rise again.”
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Forbidden History
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
The Redeemer State Governments and the End of Reconstruction
Part 6 of 7 in a Series on Reconstruction 1865-1877

In 1867, because unscrupulous members of the Union League and Freedmen’s Bureau were reported to have been inciting newly freed slaves to use violence, former Confederate Lieutenant General John Brown Gordon told a group of blacks:
"He who teaches you to regard our interest as conflicting, is not a friend to your race. Our interests are identical. If the white man is oppressed, his colored neighbor must suffer with him. They are embarked together; the one cannot swim if the other sinks."
The following from a Union League Catechism outlines the divisive political nature of that organization and Radical Republican objectives:
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Congress Investigates the Klan 1870-1871
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column

Political Majority Report Shamed by Truth of Minority Report
Part 5 of a Series on Reconstruction 1865-1877
At the end of war the South had not only suffered tremendous human losses, but was also materially and economically devastated. Yet there was no Marshall Plan for her recovery put forth by the dominant faction of Northern political leaders. Instead, Reconstruction was a plan to punish the South and remake Southern society, while continuing and even increasing her ruthless economic exploitation for the benefit of Northern commercial and industrial interests. The total war policies of the Union Army and the exploitive policies of the Reconstruction governments had caused a famine in the South in 1866, while the North was enjoying economic prosperity and plenty.
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North Carolina’s Kirk-Holden War
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Reconstruction’s Economic and Political Tyranny
Part 4 of a Series on Reconstruction 1865-1877

By 1870, the corruption of the carpetbagger governments and the violence of the Union League was becoming a concern to a significant minority in the U. S. Congress.
In 1869, there were Union League barn burnings and other destruction in every North Carolina County. During a single week in Gaston County, nine barns were burned. In two months of the same year in Edgecombe County, two churches, several cotton gins, a cotton factory, and many barns and homes were burned. The Raleigh Sentinel reported on August 29th of the same year that ten Federal Army companies associated with the Union League had terrorized the Goldsboro area and committed violent depredations of all sorts. It reported the actions of the troops “so violent that it was unsafe for women to leave their homes.”
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Reconstruction and the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Part 3 of a Series on Reconstruction 1865-1877

Few nations in the last millennium have been so devastated by loss of life and property as the South in 1865. Perhaps only the Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Serbians, and in turn the Germans themselves in the Second World War endured such suffering. A Union general bragged that crows flying over the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia would need to pack their own lunches. The Union conquerors then proceeded with the Reconstruction of the South by laying on heavy taxes, confiscating much of their remaining wealth in cotton and other goods, and forcing the sale of land under tax duress.
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