William Faulkner wrote “the past is not dead; it’s not even past,” and we are seeing that phrase happen in real time.
When I was in school from the sixth grade through the 12th grade in any history course we were taught that Carpetbaggers, representing Northern capital buying assets in the defeated South, and Scalawags, representing Southerners that cooperated with them, to be despised and reviled. Along with these civilians, federal troops were stationed in the South to maintain the rights of former slaves to vote. The ultimate goal of the federal government was to transform the South from a plantation agriculture system to a small farm and industrial base economy similar to the North.
The final collapse of this program took place in the 1876 election when the GOP agreed to end Reconstruction in the South in return for their candidate being installed in the White House. This froze the separate-but-equal system in place for the next hundred years until Civil Rights legislation was passed by the federal government. During that period the South was the main component of the Democratic party and the backbone of the old Roosevelt coalition. After Civil Rights legislation passed, the South switched parties and became the core base of the GOP.
As the song says about Dixie, “old times there are not forgotten.”
