Quote Originally Posted by PanzerJaeger
Because it wasn't theirs.

It is one thing for society to decide that slavery is not right and should be abolished. It is completely different to then simply take land from property owners who legally owned their land and distribute it to other people.

It would be as if the president emancipated your dog, and, despite the fact that owning your dog was legal yesterday, today the government decides to take half of your possessions and give them to the dog. It screams of banana republic politics.

Just because you may happen to believe that the plantation owners were acting immorally does not mean that they were acting illegally, and they should not have been punished ex post facto. The US government quickly came to this conclusion after the war and reversed the "40 acres and a mule" nonesense Sherman enacted.
Quote Originally Posted by Subotan
Of course. To pull a random example out of my History Hat, huge land redistribution in Japan post-WWII broke the power of the pre-war landlords and created a small-farmer class who were the backbone of the Liberal Democratic Party's support, thus leading to Japan's economic miracle.

I remember reading that the key to the United State's success as opposed to other post-colonial American nations which relied heavily on immigrants, such as Argentina, was the lack of a landlord class which could dominate politics and society.

Except, of course, in the South. Perhaps if radical redistribution had occured, and each black slave had acquired his 40 acres and a mule, then the Southern backlash wouldn't have occurred.
Well, here's an interesting article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/op...ates.html?_r=1

Holy Jesus, why does posting on this site have to be such a hassle? When is this going to be fixed??!?!