Meta-Buffy/America Thought

[butterfly]

"Uh, reconstruction began after the... construction, which was... shoddy, so they had to reconstruct."
Buffy, Angel (S1), on The Reconstruction

Actually, this strikes me as very true, even if Buffy may not have realized it. The construction of America was shoddy -- built on hypocrisy ("Actually, it was Jefferson." "Kept slaves. Remember?" -- Willow and Cordelia, Go Fish (S2)) and thus unstable. The Civil War was a demolition, the tearing down of a compromised structure, and then came the Reconstruction.

Comments

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Yup. "the whole number of free people and, excepting Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other people"

Since representation depended on population, the south wanted slaves to count as whole people, but the north said they shouldn't count at all. 3/5 allowed both sides to come out more or less equal.

[jic]

*nods* A compromise solution. And the best compromises have been said to make all parties equally unhappy.

I think you'll like the essay I linked below.