> The confederates should have been punished, publicly.

No, it would have led to decades or centuries of resentment between the north and the south and eventually another civil war among those lines. It would have destroyed the union for good. The only purpose of the civil war for the North was to save the union, humiliating the south would have ensured that it would never really happen.

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fzeroracer 5 days ago | parent [-]

The North 'saved' the union by allowing the South to continue its brutal practices against the freedmen leading to almost a hundred years of violence, lynching and the Black Codes designed to keep control over the 'freed' slaves.

Thaddeus Stevens was proven correct in his opinion that the south should've been treated like a conquered state and the land forcibly given to the freedmen.

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throw_m239339 5 days ago | parent [-]

Yet here we are, and the civil right act passed. On the other hand, The allies humiliating the Germans with the Versailles Treaty led to World War II.

The people who want retribution are never the ones to listen after an armistice.

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lazyasciiart 5 days ago | parent [-]

“Here we are”, indeed. Lynchings, massacres, expulsion, mass criminalization, a slave workforce for the plantations…and I’m only talking about the immediate aftermath for black southerners, not the centuries of continued violence.

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shadowgovt 5 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think parent poster is arguing that point. I think parent poster's point is that all of those things happened and the alternative, had the South been brutally subjugated, decimated, or humiliated, would have been objectively worse.

	▲	fzeroracer 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think it's a really silly point to be made because they would have to either ignore or downplay how absolutely criminal the conditions were for the freedmen. I cannot imagine a situation much worse.