Student Question
Could the Republicans' desire for ex-slave equality be reconciled with the ex-Confederates' self-rule wish?
Quick answer:
The Republicans' goal of ex-slave equality was largely irreconcilable with ex-Confederates' desire for self-rule because Southern society was built on white supremacy. Any form of self-rule likely meant returning to this status quo. Reconciliation would have required Southern whites to willingly accept African Americans' legal equality, a significant shift in mindset. Without such a change, achieving both self-rule and black equality was virtually impossible, given the entrenched racial and economic dynamics.
While it is impossible to know what might have been possible in any given situation, I would argue that there was no real way to reconcile these two positions.
The entire society and economy of the South before the war was based on the idea of white supremacy. Given this fact, any Southern "self-rule" was necessarily going to involve a return to white supremacy. It seems like it would have been essentially impossible to have self-rule with black equality.
The only way the two could have been reconciled would have been for the white Southerners to have a change of heart. They would have to have accepted the idea of giving African Americans legal equality. If they had thought about it, it shouldn't have been such a big deal since whites were still going to have the majority of the economic and political power in essentially every community. Absent such a change of heart, it would have been impossible to reconcile the two.
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