ITT: Zig Forums in 1868

>A new day dawned for Western farmers with the Homestead Act of 1862, vigorously opposed by the South prior to the Civil War. The law provided that a settler could acquire as much as 160 acres of land by residing on it for 5 years, improving it, and paying a fee of around $10. Preemption, or first choice, was still possible for certain squatters at $1.25 an acre. The Homestead Act marked a drastic departure from previous policy. Hithero public land had been sold primarily for revenue, now it was to be given away to encourage a rapid filling of empty spaces, and to provide a stimulus to the family farm, the "backbone of democracy". The new law was a blessing to thousands of farmers who had not been able to afford an adequate plot of land back east, and during the four decades following its passage half a million families settled in the vast open stretches. Five times that many families purchased their land from railroads, land companies, or the states.

>But the Homestead Act proved a cruel hoax much of the time. The standard 160 acres, quite adequate in the well-watered Mississippi Basin, proved very much inadequate in the dry High Plains. Thousands of homesteaders, perhaps two thirds, were forced to abandon a hopeless struggle against drought. Uncle Sam, it was said, bet 160 acres against $10 that the settler could not live on his homestead for 5 years. One of these failed gambles in Greer County, Oklahoma, inspired a folk song--"Hurrah for Greer County/The land of the free/The land of the bedbug, grasshopper, and flea/I'll sing of its praises/Tell of its fame/While starving to death on my government claim." Naked fraud was spawned by the Homestead Act. Perhaps ten times more of the public domain ended up in the hands of land-grabbing promoters than in the hands of actual farmers. Unscrupulous companies would use "dummy" homesteaders--often aliens bribed with cash or liquor--to grab the best properties containing timber, oil, or minerals. Settlers would later swear they had "improved" the property by erected a 12x14 dwelling, which turned out to mean 12 by 14 inches. In later years government officials were only partially successful in untangling the web of deceit. So went the US government's first great giveaway program.

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It's revolution time!

For what we the American taxpayer spent on Alaska, it had sure better have gold and furs in it like promised.

Dear Cuba plz send Sugar for Slaves;

By the time you receive this courier a ship with 200 bodies will be set a'sail from Tampa Bay to Habana; Please return with many latroons of gold and filled to the brim with fickle waisted whores.

Thank u cutie

Reminder, all our veterans. Vote as you shot and elect General Grant this fall, not the party of slavery and treason.

Even though I lost my Penis from some std I got serving in the war, I’d still say it was worth it liberating those slaves. I am beyond certain those negros will be eternally grateful.

shit, its 4 years after already and I still cant cope with the fact that we lost another uprising

off to kill Paraguayans and take a qt Paraguayan woman as my wife
and burn and loot Asuncion with the Uruguaybros

Men of the South, remember that you did not lose the war for lack of heroism on the field of battle, but merely because they had more men to throw into battle than we. We may have lost the war, but the honor of our people shall be preserved and never shall the Yanks and the party of Lincoln compel us to accept the colored folk as our equals. So join the Ku Klux Clan with me and let us set fire to a freedmen's schoolhouse full of children.

youtube.com/watch?v=KAGHdIQfGLI

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feel like pure shit
just want him back

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But we were supposed to win ;_;

>With white Southerners denied their voting rights or Congressional seats so long as their states were under military occupation, ex-slaves, many of whom were barely literate, were being dragooned by carpetbaggers into occupying all different positions of authority in Southern cities. An ex-slave who had been bagging cotton just five years earlier might now be sitting in a judge's chair with a gavel in hand while his educated former master, fluent in three languages, was unable to vote or hold public office.

>Predictably, most of these blacks were little more than pawns in the hands of carpetbaggers and graft ran rampant, especially in South Carolina and Louisiana. Although no blacks served as governors or Senators, some were state legislators or even Congressmen. These blacks were generally literate, intelligent men who came from the educated prewar ranks of freedmen. Some of the mixed-race legislators did pass genuinely useful reforms including allowing women to own property, public works projects, public school systems, and improved tax codes, and these laws were largely kept by all-white legislators after Reconstruction ended.

looks like our time just hasnt come yet

Joining Canada? I think not

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>Started as an extremist response to Reconstruction, the original Ku Klux Klan was formed to terrorize freedmen and carpetbaggers. Scaring them into staying away from the polls was often enough, but those who persisted were subjected to brutal reprisals. In one particularly memorable massacre in Louisiana in 1868, some 200 whites and blacks were attacked, injured, or killed by Klansmen; a pile of 25 bodies was discovered in shallow graves in the woods. The KKK was suppressed when Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870-71.

>Southerners also did not hesitate to point out the embarrassing fact that blacks in most northern states were not eligible to vote prior to the 15th Amendment, enforcement of which proved all-but impossible once Reconstruction was over. The Southern states for decades openly flouted the 15th Amendment with a mixture of trickery, terror, and biased literacy tests to deny blacks the ballot.

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>On February 24, the House voted 126-47 to impeach President Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office act and "coarse, contemptible language and behavior unbefitting a president." The impeachment hearings were held on May 16 in a tense atmosphere. The president mostly sat in silence while his able lawyers handled everything. The prosecution botched the case badly and the vote to impeach Johnson failed by a single ballot. Seven Republican Senators bravely put common sense ahead of party and voted no on impeachment. Despite the anger of Radical Republicans at their failure (would-be 18th president Ben Wade had already chosen his cabinet, including the scheming Ben Butler as Secretary of State), the verdict was accepted and life went on. In a weaker republic such as the states of Latin America, the failure to impeach a president might have led to an armed rebellion or coup.

>At most, Johnson was guilty of poor judgement, temper, and choice of language, but certainly not high crimes and misdemeanors.

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>The Johnson impeachment fracas had soured voters on professional politicians, and the notion that a good general was bound to be a good president still held strong. The GOP easily nominated Ulysses Grant as their candidate for 1868. Unfortunately, Grant knew more about war than almost anything else. A man of breathtakingly narrow cultural horizons (he once said that Venice would be lovely if its canals were drained), he was a better judge of horses than men. He had voted just once in his life, for the Democrat ticket in 1856.

>The Democrats could not agree on much outside an immediate halt to Reconstruction. There were calls from Eastern delegates to redeem war bonds in gold (although they had been purchased primarily with worthless paper money) while Westerners called for them to be redeemed in greenbacks so as to expand the money supply and help indebted farmers repay loans. When the DNC ended up nominating New York governor Horatio Seymour, he immediately came out in support of the gold platform and thus lost the support of the West. The Republicans meanwhile aggressively championed Grant as the architect of victory in the war and urged veterans to put him in the White House.

>On Election Day, Grant easily swept the Electoral College 214 to 80, but he got only 300k more popular votes than Seymour. Tthe votes of half a million freed slaves the GOP had dragooned into voting gave Grant the win.

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