How would you have treated confederate leaders?

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had them shot for treason.

Yes and Lincoln was the first person to be executed under this rule.


Anyways, I doubt Lee would have been able to do anything in regards to reconstruction. He was in very ill health from 1864 onwards until his death in 1870. His birthday is coming up shortly as well. Jan 19th 1807.

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More or less the same as they were in real life.
The two main things I would have tried to do different are:
-The US government attempted to collect back taxes for 1861-4. That was dumb and vindictive (although of course totally legal and "logical"), not to mention highly damaging to the Southern economy, which needed money pumped in, not out. Now that's an amnesty the South should have goten but didn't.
-The Freedmen should have been compensated (as was demanded by the most Radical Republicans, as well as the Freedmen themselves.) "40 Acres and a Mule" was the cry of the time, and I endorse it, also it needs some modifications (such as for the differing fertility of the country. Also, in the inland cotton country, cooperatives would likely have worked better than small individual holdings) I have no problem endorsing seizing of large plantations for the purpose.
With that program in place, the Blacks' defranchising after 1876 simply couldn't have happened, and the South's history since might have been much happier.

The infamous "40 acres and a mule" was never a promise made by the government. It was actually a newspaper article written on what to do w/the slaves after they were freed.

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Had the senior government leadership shot, hand out prison terms to some of the officers, and require the rest to swear an oath of loyalty to the Union (or leave).

Congrats, you just started a guerrilla war!

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As for the question. Complete pardon and automatic citizenship back into the US. As for the planters and civilians, full and unquestioned reparations for the destruction of private property as well as the forced return of all western VA counties back to Virginia (even though this was actually done after the war and WVA decided to stay a state).

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I'd have dropped the issue of back taxes and instituted a speedy land reform in which all slaves received land and/or money while all plantation owners would have been reduced to working class standards. I'm not sure whether or not I would have bothered with criminal proceedings against the main traitors - since it was technically impossible to try all the traitors, it would have been difficult to reasonably draw the line anywhere, so dropping the issue makes sense.

The only traitors were those in the US Federal Government.

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2. Break up plantations and give land to both poor whites and blacks.
3. Permanent federal troops.
4. Anyone under the age of 12 gets sent to northern boarding schools until they come of age.

For once MasterJedi comes up with some good ideas!

I'd also institute a lifetime ban on the right to vote and own property for all Confederate veterans. I'd also send federal troops around to destroy and desecrate every Confederate graveyard, and at random select some dead veterans to be dug up, have their bodies cut to pieces and have the pile be left at their family's doorstep.

We'd still be fighting the war if those ideas above had been implemented.

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1. Hang all political and military confederate leaders.
2. Break up plantations and give land to both poor whites and blacks.
3. Permanent federal troops.
4. Anyone under the age of 12 gets sent to northern boarding schools until they come of age.

Only the second one sounds like a good idea.  The rest I could do without. 

Number 3 is exactly the reason the Ku Klux Klan became violent after it was founded.

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Actually Jedi, nothing against you, but your comments show exactly the pathetic state our education system is in. Federal troops WERE in the South for years after the war and instead of sending southern kids north the yankee govt sent Northern teachers into the south to brainwash the children into believing that what their fathers & mothers fought for was "wrong".

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All of them should've been tried for treason. The main political leaders should've been executed. I'm not so sure about some of the military leaders, particularly Robert E. Lee, who at least was not convinced of the morality of slavery.

I think the largest plantations should've been broken up and land given to poor whites and blacks. Federal troops should've stayed in the South at least until the end of the 19th century to ensure blacks got all the civil rights they deserved, particularly the right to vote.

No matter what the neo-Confederates say, the Civil War was fought fundamentally over slavery. All of the leaders of this breakaway nation were fighting for this inhumane institution and should have faced justice. Many deserved execution. The disaster that happened when Hayes ended the Reconstruction shows that federal troops needed to be mantained for as long as was necessary to protect blacks.

We've been fed your BS history for long enough. Got any other "corrections" you'd like to make?

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Actually Jedi, nothing against you, but your comments show exactly the pathetic state our education system is in. Federal troops WERE in the South for years after the war and instead of sending southern kids north the yankee govt sent Northern teachers into the south to brainwash the children into believing that what their fathers & mothers fought for was "wrong".

You forgot to mention the five military governors of the South.

* First Military District:  under General John Schofield
* Second Military District: under General Daniel Sickles
* Third Military District: under General John Pope
* Fourth Military District: under General Edward Ord
* Fifth Military District: under Generals Philip Sheridan and Winfield Scott Hancock

Wow... amazing, four of the six governors were completely worthless as battlefield commanders.

Hancock was the best out of all those listed.

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To say that the Civil War was fought solely about slavery is simplistic. Granted, slavery was a big part of it, probably the biggest part, but not the only part.

Okay then, try and refute this:

All the sectionally charged political issues of the antebellum period - "States Rights", homesteading, tariffs, wars of annexation, Right of Petition - are largely variants on the overriding issue of slavery. That is, none would have been sectionally charged without it. None could have led to civil warfare. (And yes, Northerners could invoke "States' Rights" and Nullification too. Think of the Fugitive Slave Acts.)

The truth is, the war was *objectively* fought over slavery by the South, and over slavery and the, ahem, sanctity of the Union by the North, whatever people thought they were doing. Oddly enough, this is an issue on which scholarly historians and the uneducated public agree, while the half-educated public and more "popular"/simplistic historians have come up with another position that has some merits but isn't nearly well-thought-through enough.

"Scholarly"? Do you mean history revisers like William C. Davis?