Resolved; America would be less divisive today if we had executed Confederate leaders for treason

Great Debates
1

If, following the end of the Civil War, the United States had identified the Confederate politicians and military officers as having committed treason (I’d imagine issuing a pardon to anybody who didn’t obtain a command - in this case, just following orders would constitute a defense), and following military trials conducted according to the standard of proof laid out in the Constitution

found them guilty, and then had them hanged until dead, America would be a more cohesive, and less racist, society today.

Imagine if the lost cause narrative was instead countered with some famous picture of Robert E. Lee’s dead body hanging from the gallows (one that school kids would be pretty familiar with - sort of a milestone moment in American history). And Jefferson Davis is notorious as “that guy who tried to escape dressed like a woman.” Make his hanging famous, too. The glory of the south’s secession is pretty hard to render when the government, in accordance with the constitution, clearly labeled them traitors, punished according to the custom of the time.

It’s not like they don’t fairly qualify for the charge. If ever there was a time when the U.S. could claim jurisdiction over a person, and the find them guilty of the one crime that is outlined in our founding documents, it’s when these people founded a confederate government and then attacked and killed Americans.

Trials would be simple. Are there two men who can testify that he saw this defendant astride a horse, leading soldiers to war? Maybe a witness will be a former rebel soldier who will say “that’s the man who gave me orders to attack”, or it’s a union man who will say “that’s the man who led the charge”, but we should have an historical record of dozens of these trials, so that at least all the generals got their comeuppance.

And anybody elected to the Confederate government (I exclude state level office holders; I presume that during the rebellion states still had things like governors), who voted on the appropriation of supplies to these soldiers, is levying war as well.

I think that the reckoning would have been important. I believe that it would have reduced the impetus for the black codes after reconstruction (which culminated in the widespread de jure segregation that only subsided 100 year later) and laid precedent for a federal government that would enforce the law, thus ensuring that the “states rights” crowd that pushed back against civil rights would be far less effective.

America never purged itself of the ideology of slavery the way, for example, Germany did with the Nazis.

I truly think that would have been facilitated if the nation had executed those responsible. Their ideology would, of course, still be enticing to some, but our society would not be tolerant of such bigotry the way it remains embedded today. And we’d have an alternative history that did not permit the extreme pushback against progressive ideas that has been the hallmark of the old confederacy.

2

As a foreign observer, I am somewhat puzzled why this has become a thing in recent years. If the people who actually fought and beat the rebels could find it in them to promote reconciliation over revenge, why are you bent on reversing this? Nobody benefits from it, least of all those whose bones are long since dust.

3

Because their “reconciliation” consisted of letting the southern leaders brutalize Black people for another hundred years, while continuing to proclaim it was righteous.

And even now, we are dealing with their emotional, ignorant thinking as a form of leadership, and it’s a plague on the nation.

4

What do you think would be happening to the black population in the South while their leaders were being hanged by the hated Northeners? Ten of them for one of us would be the slogan.

You can’t believe they would be protected in any way. That would require a larger army than used in the war.

5

They didn’t choose reconciliation. They chose capitulation.

To the OP, it would be a start, but there were other missed opportunities in Reconstruction that would have made an even bigger difference. Like not re-admitting the treasonous states until after they had established democracies, or confiscating plantations to pay reparations to the former slaves.

It would have required the very same army. And remember that blacks were (and in many cases, still are) more numerous than whites in those places.

6

Their executions weren’t necessary. Union forces continued to occupy the South until the Compromise of 1877 made it no longer politically viable. The Compromise was an informal agreement that Rutherford B. Hayes would be allowed to occupy the White House and he would remove federal troops from a few Southern states. During Reconstruction, there were three Republican states in the South and many blacks elected to the state legislatures including Mississippi. Reconstruction was working, and if we had stuck it out maybe we’d be in a much better position today.

7

Perhaps there should have been a Marshall Plan for the south – work to make it prosperous while insisting on equality. It seems to me that a good deal of the problem with the south was that it was so poor, and the white people made sure that the blacks were poorer than they (the whites) were. Part of that Marshall Plan would be to work to upgrade education to the best modern standards of the time, and to keep up the same level of education that was common in the rest of the country (it wasn’t great, but it did get better). Control the curriculum to make sure the mythology of white superiority and the “benefits” of slavery are removed as far as possible. Make the prosperity program depend on the children of the household being taught this way in public schools. Make the program non-reversible (somehow) by Congress – it needs to last three generations to take full effect.

So as not to be seen to be rewarding sedition and treason, the leaders should have had something done to them short of execution (no point in making martyrs). Stripped of their property, perhaps some prison time. The leaders led, but they did not whip up the pro-slavery sentiment, it was embedded in the fabric of the region, so I think something short of execution is both fair and a better idea.

8

Same in what way?

In May 1865, there were approximately 1 million Soldiers in the Union Army. A rapid demobilization followed and by January 1866, there just 87,550 occupation troops in the South, and by October 1867, there were a mere 20,117 Soldiers.

And in our reality that helped them how exactly?

Or, possibly, reconstruction was a monstrous failure because nobody in the North actually gave a shit about the black population and they bailed as soon as they possibly could with literally nothing positive achieved. The OP’s proposition only looks good compared to what actually transpired.

9

Well, they did take Robert E. Lee’s farm and turn it in to a cemetery.

But they could have at least razed his home instead of memorializing him.

Instead, he got to go off and be the president of a university.

That’s injustice.

10

Again, Reconstruction wasn’t a mostrous failure. That was a narrative pushed by Southern revisionist, the same type of people who pushed the Lost Cause narrative, beacuse fighting against a bunch of corrupt carpet baggers sounds a lot more romantic that shooting people in the face beacause they don’t mind black people voting or serving as elected officials. If the North never gave a shit, they wouldn’t have stuck around for twelve years after the war. But it’s true, Northerners got tired of dealing with it which is one of the reasons the Compromise was possible.

11

An interesting premise. I wonder what historians would have to say about it.

I’m currently about 750 pages into Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and while I still have about 400 pages to go (I’m guessing the Nazis lose, but don’t spoiler it for me), there are numerous details about the Nuremberg trials. The abject defeat of the Nazis, punctuated by the execution of the key leaders, certainly eliminated any doubts about their war crimes. More than that, if there was any lingering notion of Nazi glory and their version of a “Lost Cause,” the trials certainly helped to throw cold water on that.

The Nazis were shown to be the unambiguously evil bad guys. Their self-created humiliation was complete. And Germany subsequently has no time for any neo-Nazi nonsense. I do wonder if the OP’s premise holds water.

12

Thank you for seeing my point - there needs to be some pain associated with losing that war, a flash point in history to point to whenever that sort of mindset rears its head again.

13

It didn’t, because the US forces supported the traitors over them. That’s what we needed to do differently.

14

You mean like Reconstruction, only done right (and for much longer)?

Plot twist: Lee’s son successfully sued for and received compensation for the taking of Lee’s Arlington property. So the property wasn’t really confiscated as it should have been (a total forfeiture).

To the OP, FWIW, I think at minimum the ring leaders should have been tried for (and surely would have been convicted of) treason. I think the decision to reconcile was an expedient one for the short term, but not necessarily moral or best for the long term health of the nation.

And to @Mk_VII, I would just say the decision to go with the expedient short term option was by no means universally lauded. You can find writings by Unionists dating to just a few years after the war where it was obvious to them at the time that reconciliation for the sake of expediency was being spun as a kind of moral justification by ex-Confederates in the vein of “They didn’t try us for treason because deep down they knew our Cause, Lost thought it may be, was fundamentally just.”

Also, @Mk_VII, I am puzzled by the idea that even if people in the 19th century thought something was morally right, or at least forgivable, that we must now, looking back, continue to adhere to such a view.

15

I ask again. How would that be accomplished without retaliation against the black population?

16

The OP has simply created an entire class of martyrs for a lost cause.

17

Post-war Germans suggested they did not know how awful their countrymen were. Some of that may be true, may not be. But, the defeated Germans generally wanted to move past their Nazi history by acknowledging it. Acknowledging that it was a mistake, and wrong. Even if you decapitated the Conferderate leadership, I am not sure the defeated Southerners wanted to move past their slavery history. They lost the war, bitterly, but it sure seems they were not going to lose their dominance over former slaves.

18

Maybe we should have turned all their property over to the ex-slaves, and enslaved the white population for, oh, say two generations.

No, three, just to be safe. Then we set all the slaves free, and let them cope with fitting into society again.

19

Southern society was seeped in notions of a hierarchical class structure and the importance of honor. I think the typical Johnny Reb would have understood and accepted the idea that the leaders of the rebellion committed treason and had to be punished for their crimes. And if the U.S. pardoned the typical enlisted man, it would be the act of charity that reflects that this was not mere bloodlust, but punishment for an express breach of the constitution.

That’s not to say that there wouldn’t have been pushback (I think the KKK still forms), but I think the mythos would have developed along the lines of “we were good men led astray”, which is a far better outcome than “ours was a just cause, and we shall one day rise again”.

20

Please explain.