Radical Reconstruction and State Omnipotence
In his book Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises traces the shift in Europe from individualism to state omnipotence, highlighting the disastrous effects of empowering government to run every aspect of social and economic life:
Men now seem eager to vest all powers in governments, i.e., in the apparatus of social compulsion and coercion. They aim at totalitarianism, that is, conditions in which all human affairs are managed by governments. They hail every step toward more government interference as progress toward a more perfect world; they are confident that the governments will transform the earth into a paradise.
That insight aptly encapsulates the centralization of government power during the Reconstruction Era of 1865 to 1877 in the American South. The Radical Republicans saw the federal government as essential to the daunting task of rebuilding the south. William Dunning describes the devastation caused by the war, “the ravaged territory of the Confederacy, [as] the ancient social structure lay in obvious and irremediable ruin.” Particularly in “the heart of the Confederacy, the cotton states proper…chaos was universal.” In addition to the casualties of war, much of the South had been burned to the ground by General Sherman’s armies. The organization of labor was in disarray. While some emancipated slaves stayed at their usual work, others “wandered aimless but happy through the country, [and] found endless delight in hanging about the towns and Union camps.” The challenge of social and economic reconstruction was not inconsiderable.
Under the guise of rebuilding the subjugated territory, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 decreed that “no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists in the rebel States,” and that it was therefore necessary for “loyal and republican State governments” to be “legally established.” To that end, the rebel states were divided into military districts to be “subject to the military authority of the United States.” To the Radical Republican, Southerners were neither loyal nor republican, as they were still devoted to their “lost cause.” Therefore, the Radicals reasoned, men loyal to the Union would have to be brought in to rebuild the South. Dunning observes that,
The [Radical Republican] party, then, which triumphed in the making of the [Southern] constitutions, and which looked forward to a further triumph in their ratification, consisted chiefly of freedmen, led by a small number of northern whites—the detested “carpet-baggers.” With these were united a body of [Southern] whites—the even more detested “scalawags”—who were either war-time Unionists animated by still undiminished hatred of the ex-Confederates, or “reconstructed” rebels who had given up the fight against the congressional policy…
The duty of the reconstruction go
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