Get Off the Track! (1860 runoff)

[Elcaspar]

Sumner again

[Elcaspar]

So i want to understand some of you Tilden voters. Do you seriously think that the South won't just degenerate again without further Reconstruction? We just missed a prime opportunity to change Southern society for the better, and you just threw that away? So much for fulfilling the promise of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

[Elcaspar]

Oh that's easy. Everything KaiserDave said, plus Tilden stands for Papist immigrants and Sumner stands for bigoted Yankees.

So let me get this straight. Tilden who said that the work of Reconstruction is over is less of a bigot than Sumner who stands for the continuation of Reconstruction? That seems like rather flawed reasoning.

Tilden to own the Redeemers (Catholic).

See below.

Finally, Tilden oversaw the gradual reduction of the federal military presence in the former Confederacy, with the result that Redeemers reclaimed control of several state governments in the lower South in 1861 and 1862.

Well would you look at that. So much for "owning" the Redeemers by voting for Tilden. I hope it was worth it to you still in the end.

With Sumner you would have had much more of actually owning the Redeemers, rather than empowering them by reducing the federal military presence.

[Elcaspar]

This is where Sumner lost me "Sumner's platform is a callback to the Yankee republicanism of an earlier time: denouncing the Republicans as radical redistributionists and attempting to tie Tilden to the liberal and socialist revolutions in Europe, they call for an end to the culture of corruption that has pervaded Washington under Seward and now Frémont, labor reform, temperance, protectionism, and opposition to state involvement in private business ventures."

Yeah i don't like a lot of those things either, so it was a tough pill to swallow, but in my view the issue of Reconstruction weighs above all others. Even just the potential for a Southern society that would be changed for the better in the long-term made it worth to me.