Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Good take on the way it really was. Soon enough, perhaps within days, we'll see if it has to happen, again.

This time? The regular U.S. Army and the Marine Corps have a short trip from their bases to the 'rebel enclaves', literally out the front door, and they can deploy an overwhelming disparity of force; air, armor, heavy weapons. Atlanta won't burn this time and a few again futile Pickett's charges will end it quickly for this latest iteration of the Confederacy.

And it required force. President Grant was elected in 1868 with the slogan, “Let us have peace.” He wanted reconciliation. Three years later, he’s sending troops into South Carolina to crush the Ku Klux Klan. You can’t have peace when the other side is out there acting as a terrorist body, assassinating people if they try to vote and things like that. So the tragedy of Reconstruction is that the commitment to enforce it waned much too soon.