Explanation: In the US Civil War, the core of the conflict was over the rights of Black folk as human beings, with the secessionist Confederacy being in support of race-based slavery and white supremacy as the literal foundation of their government and society, and openly and proudly so; and the Union, the democratically elected pre-war government, eventually, reluctantly, coming around to the idea of abolishing slavery and affording Black folk equal rights. Some Unionists were more based on this issue than others.
When Black soldiers began to be employed by the Union after the first year of the war, the slaver Confederates were shocked and appalled, and often objected in ways that were sometimes hilariously pathetic, and sometimes… tellingly gruesome and cruel. This is the case of the former - when captured Confederate soldiers learned that they were going to be escorted as PoWs by a unit of Black troops, they protested to Union General George Thomas. He told them to fuck off, but eloquently, as seen in the meme. The slaver scum meekly submitted after being put in their place, like slavers generally do when they aren’t separated from their victims by chains and whips.
For bonus points, the unit of Black troops were almost certainly not the only troops he could spare at the time, lmao.
For bonus points, the unit of Black troops were almost certainly not the only troops he could spare at the time, lmao.
🤣
i keep hearing about “equal rights for black people” during the US Civil war, but then Rosa Park happened some 200 years later …
100 years, but the truth of it is even more gruesome.
Federal anti-segregation legislation even for public transport was passed in the 1870s (struck down, ironically, by SCOTUS). We elected Black Congressmen in the South in the 1870s and 1880s - something that wouldn’t happen again until 1969.
We backslid for decades because of a mixture of political maneuvering and welcoming the former slaver scum back into national life, until the white majority got tired of the fight and let the fuckers dictate policy on the Black minority, at least on the state level.
You can win the war and lose the peace - peace is often a much longer and more exhausting fight.
Reconstruction needed at least 50 more years before it ended, instead the feds threw in the towel, and rights got snatched away so fast, with too few caring cause they were white, and weren’t living in the south.
Even ten years would’ve resulted in less backsliding. Hell, even four more years would’ve been a godsend, considering that Grant’s second term ended just as South Carolina experienced a literal white supremacist coup.
We needed more, much more, but we couldn’t even get a sliver more.
Maintaining the enthusiasm of the mass of politically detached folk is miserable work, with marginal returns for success but massive damages from failure.
You can die if you want to
You can leave your friends behind.Cause your friends do lynch.
And if they do lynch,
They’re no friends of mine.
Half a century or so later, when France occupied the Ruhr Valley after WW1, they billeted North African troops in the locals’ houses, some say to humiliate the once-proud Germans. (I didn’t read what happened afterwards, but I’m sure nothing bad resulted from this action.)
