A sneaking suspicion

[orangecrush]

I am starting to get the sneaking suspicion the Confederacy was insufficiently punished

— Seth Abramson (@sethabramson.bsky.social) 2026-05-07T23:55:35.758Z

[sheshe2]

1. And the Klan never died.

They were just dormant under the sheets for a bit.

[Buddyzbuddy]

10. And now they're wearing black robes and no hood.

Oh yeah, and they've opened membership to a minority.

[dalton99a]

2. The rebel leaders should have been tried and executed.

[TomSlick]

14. Exactly. Open rebellion is the very definition of treason.

Instead of trying the rebel leaders for treason, they were lionized and allowed to sow the seeds Jim Crow and today's white nationalism.

The US was too quick to "bind up the nation's wounds." Real reconstruction of the rebellious states was made impossible by failing to punish the leaders of the rebellion. The US won the war and lost the peace.

[OldBaldy1701E]

17. Well said! (n/t)

[yellow dahlia]

3. Indeed.

With what's going on with gerrymandering - maybe we would be better off w/out the South.

[BeneteauBum]

6. Please don't isolate me! 😊

Peace ☮️

[yellow dahlia]

7. Good point. There are good people below the M-D line.

I am glad to see so many voices standing up in Tennessee and elsewhere.

[relogic]

4. That Confederacy

rose out of the white, European entitlement spawned from colonialism. The founders and our grand experiment was blemished, rotten and riddled with racism, not so easily detected or unveiled fully in those 60 -70 years since that founding. Then, the same ugliness we see now of white entitlement came to a head. A civil war, indeed.

We must punish ourselves today as we must the well-meaning carpenters of independence, though their horror at what they’ve seen created must be enough.

[Dave Id]

5. I've said for years the confederacy didn't lose

they just retreated, then spread their toxic racism throughout the country.

[blubunyip]

24. why do you think

the toxic racism spread? Must have found some fertile ground...

[Exp]

8. Ya think?!?!?!

[dflprincess]

9. We should never have let them back into the union

Should have just treated them as territories like Guam or Puerto Rico.

[IzzaNuDay]

11. Now I am hoping for a secession

Hint to West Coast— let’s get the heck out of here!

[RainCaster]

23. I'd go for that!

Let's take NY & MA as well.
Canada can nationalize Trump's properties, them convert them to serve the needy.

[GiqueCee]

12. Let's boil it down to its essence...

... Confederates were traitors. Celebrating them in any way, shape, or form, can no longer be condoned. It should never have been condoned at all. Ever. But too many slaveholders and their sympathizers in the North let lowlifes lead the way for far, far too long.
My surname is very common in the South. And I've known People of Color that share that name because their ancestors were the property of some of my ancestors. I can never make amends for that obscene travesty; I can only try to live my life better, and give what little I can to make the lives of others a little better.
I'm old. Hell, I don't even buy green bananas, and folks younger than me drop like flies every day, so I harbor no illusions that I'll live long enough to help make the world a better place. I'm just a drop in that bucket, but they say a single drop counts. I will keep trying to count.

[Permanut]

13. Well said, GiqueCee..

I was born and raised in the Northwest, which was not squeaky clean of the stench. The KKK was very active in Oregon in the 20's.

[blubunyip]

25. And hmmm Ohio? Parts of New York even.

etc etc. You can South bash all you want, but toxic racism is everywhere.

Amusing to me how some people in the North want to feel squeaky clean while otherizing "The South."

It's not productive. Especially not considering the other ways the PTB have successfully divided us.

[moondust]

15. Compromise of 1877

~
During the Reconstruction era of the 1860s and 1870s, the Southern United States fell under federal military oversight. The compromise (of 1877) entailed that Democrats ended both a filibuster of the certified (1876) election results as well as threats of political violence in exchange for the Republicans' ending military oversight. When (Rutherford B.) Hayes took office, he withdrew the last federal troops from the South, which historians largely regard as the end of Reconstruction.
~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877

[returnee]

16. If only I could rec more than once.

Playing off the inherent flaws in our Constitution, the Lincoln and Johnson administrations failed to adequately punish the remnants of the confederacy thus allowing the inherent sociopathy therein to fester. We now have a situation not unlike leaving an infection in the human body insufficiently treated, leading to resistance to increasingly potent antibiotics. We now appear to have a democracy-resistant fascist infection.

[Rhiannon12866]

19. After the war Robert E. Lee petitioned to have his citizenship restored, but he was not pardoned nor had his

Citizenship restored in his lifetime. But Senator Harry Byrd conducted a 5-year campaign to pardon him, since Lee had signed an oath of allegiance, and it passed, so President Ford signed the bill in 1975.

[orangecrush]

21. Thank you

[lonely bird]

18. They lost the war but

They won the peace.

The “Party of Lincoln™️” abandoned the Black people with the machinations of the election in 1876. Conservatives wanted to do business with the South and that was deemed more important than what happened to the former slaves.

[Susan Calvin]

20. That's not a sneaking suspicion.

That's a fact.

[dalton99a]

22. +1

[Blue Owl]

26. Same with Nazis and Nazism