Sidney Andrews Quotes
Any plan of reconstruction is wrong that tends to leave these old leaders in power.
The South at the time had a virtual caste system with a few families in each area controlling and leading. Many Unionists from the argued that the lower and middle class whites had to be given more power and education about their rights. Of course the controlling families had a strong vested interest to see that Reconstruction failed and the “Yankees” were hated. Anti-Negro racism was just a part of the motivation. Maintaining the elite families power of the pre-war political culture was also critical. The Northern Reconstuctionists were therefore twice dangerous.
Sidney Andrews, Mid 19th Century, Investigative Journalist of the Post Civil War South, “Three Months Among the Reconstructionists” The Atlantic Monthly, February 1866
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Commenting on the fact that China was eliminating it's Constitutional requirement that government leadership had to change every 10 years.
Although there are many historical and political thinkers who do not agree that upheavals are inevitable or desirable in America, Vann Woodward and many others follow the school of American thought led by Thomas Jefferson and others of the founding fathers. With the exception of the Civil War most of the American upheavals, though painful to many losing privilege and power have not been massively bloody and have been mostly political.
Vladimir Lenin
