Was there any attempt to "de-confederize" the South like there was to "de-nazify" post-war Germany?

by djchazradio
Tiddums

The closest analogue is known as "Reconstruction". The 1860's and 1870's encompassed this period referred to as the Reconstruction Era, whereupon the former CSA transitioned from occupied enemy territory to restored members of the union. How the south was to be dealt with was a controversial issue in the politics of the day. Overall it did not go as swimmingly as some would have hoped - although Slavery was abolished and the Confederate armies were disbanded, the South, unlike Germany, did manage to find alternative mechanisms to keep African Americans unequal and forge their own narrative of the civil war and its history that, while not dominant, still persists to this day.

Some recent questions that might be of interest to you:

robertsonwx

Is it against the rules to ask for reading recommendations? I'd love to learn more about reconstruction.

AtlanticMaritimer

I'm going to deviate slightly and talk about root causes of both wars and how certain laws were created to either continue an ideology or to prevent an ideology. I want to do this because coming from a political historical background it's in my opinion that these two events were greatly ideological.

So, essentially what occurred was that after the war the North tried to bring in the South as fast as possible. All the while in doing this they also managed to ensure that slavery was made illegal in the South. The important piece here are the Jim Crow laws that emerged. In some ways while the North had made strides to bring the South into the US, the ability of the states to be able to retain the ability to pass laws discriminating and allowing African Americans to be lynched without real repercussions for decades. The rise of the KKK is another show of how any real attempt to reign in the South was largely unsuccessful.

I think when it comes to de-nazifying Germany there are two big things that has made the process successful which stands in stark contrast to the inability of the North to reign in the South. Firstly, it's the notion of remembrance. Post WWII Germany has become a country horrified by its own actions and has held the atrocities committed during WWII to the forefront of their memory. A little bit of like you're starting to see in Canada with the Residential schools.

But here the Allies and the German government implemented the "Basic Law" which contains a section distinctly declaring that Germany is essentially a democratic country and anyone who forms government should not be able to dismantle the democratic institutions. Additionally, Germany and France began the European Steel and Coal Commission. This was essentially a means to ensure Germany could not be able to use their resources for military purposes.

So to conclude, really in my view there's a lot of institutional things occurring or not occurring. Germany was able to prevent the ability of parties to take hold of power and to assert themselves as dictators through institutional means. They then made sure that if that did happen, this leader would have difficulty amassing resources for an Army because they were trading the most important resources to France.

I'm the South, there were attempts that successfully got rid of confederates from power. However, the South was allowed to make new laws known as Jim Crow that lasted for almost a century.

Another big difference is in the notion of remembrance. Germany regretted what had happened, yet in the South they haven't shown that type of regret.