By Mike Scruggs

Category: Mike Scruggs' Column

Published: 20 April 2020

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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By Mike Scruggs

Category: Mike Scruggs' Column

Published: 13 April 2020

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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By Mike Scruggs

Category: Mike Scruggs' Column

Published: 07 April 2020

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 29^th 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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By Mike Scruggs

Category: Mike Scruggs' Column

Published: 30 March 2020

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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