Andrew answers one of his readers' letters here. I agree with the sentiment, though not necessarily the analogy as such. Reconstruction was certainly a bad deal for a lot of people, and corruption certainly was rampant, but it definitely made things better for African-Americans, no? During Reconstruction, the percentage of the nation owned by Blacks went from, well, zero to around two percent. I believe it's three percent now. I've heard the theory that sharecropping was worse than slavery because at least slavery was honest exploitation, but I disagree. Now one can say that Reconstruction was a bad idea from the outset because it fostered racial hostilities that are with us to this day, but at the time there were (and still are) no easy answers to the question of how to enfranchise Blacks. Things are better now, but without Reconstruction, they would undoubtedly have been worse.
I was also under the impression that Jim Crow started up after Reconstruction, but I'm less sure
about that. I need to read more on the aftermath of the Civil War, that's for sure.
