During the Civil War, the United States government made no pretense of sympathy toward the Confederacy. The South was viewed as a traitorous rebellion. Lincoln never acknowledged the Confederacy as a legitimate government. Union policy was clear: crush the rebellion, restore the Union, and, eventually, end slavery. There was no negotiation, recognition, or respect offered to Confederate leadership. But once the war ended, the mask of righteous indignation slipped—and what followed was not just sympathy but a gross injustice: complicity disguised as reconciliation, a moral outrage that should still resonate with us today.

The Union may have won the war, but the South won the narrative. And the federal government let them.

No Reparations, No Justice

The clearest expression of post-war sympathy wasn't a monument or a pardon—it was the refusal to provide reparations to the very people whose stolen labor built the Southern economy. Four million people were emancipated from slavery with nothing—no land, no compensation, no restitution. Meanwhile, former slaveholders had their land returned, their political rights restored, and their "honor" rehabilitated.

General Sherman's promise of "forty acres and a mule" was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson. That land was handed back to Confederates, who had declared war on the nation. Black families who had begun building communities on that land were evicted—displaced again, this time by the federal government they believed had freed them. The government chose to protect the economic interests of white Southerners rather than address the generational theft inflicted on Black people. That wasn't neutrality. That was intentional sympathy for white supremacy.

No Trials, No Accountability

Jefferson Davis committed treason against the United States. So did Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and every other Confederate general. Yet not a single Confederate leader was executed or convicted. Davis was imprisoned briefly and then released. Lee was pardoned. Thousands of former Confederates were welcomed back into public office, Congress, and the armed forces.

Imagine the message that was sent: You can wage war to preserve slavery. You can cause the death of over 600,000 Americans. And still, you will be restored, honored, and celebrated. That's not healing—it's surrender. It's a choice to protect white America's ego at the expense of justice.

Confederate Monuments: Public Shrines to White Supremacy

The post-war glorification of the Confederacy didn't happen by accident. It was meticulously designed. Across the South—and even outside of it—statues went up. Not immediately after the war but decades later, in the middle of Jim Crow and during the Civil Rights Movement. These weren't tributes to "heritage." They were warnings. They were monuments to white power, built to remind Black people exactly who still ruled, a deliberate betrayal of the principles of justice and equality.

Schools, streets, courthouses, and military bases were named after traitors—men who fought to keep Black people in chains. Fort Bragg. Fort Hood. Lee High School. Jefferson Davis Parkway. These are not obscure footnotes—they are state-sanctioned memorials to slavery and racial violence. And the federal government allowed it. In some cases, it funded it.

This wasn't a passive oversight. It was a deliberate decision to allow white Southerners to rewrite the past and install it in granite and bronze for future generations to salute. That's not historical memory—it's cultural propaganda. It turned the Confederate flag into a symbol of pride instead of a banner of terrorism. It perpetuated a lie so persistent that many Americans still believe the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

Reconstruction Abandoned, White Power Restored

The federal government had the power to remake the South. For a brief moment during Reconstruction, it tried. Black men voted. Black leaders were elected. Freedpeople opened schools and bought land. But that fragile progress was crushed beneath the weight of white resentment and Northern apathy.

The Compromise of 1877, a political agreement that effectively ended Reconstruction, was a turning point. In exchange for political peace, the federal government withdrew Union troops from the South, effectively returning power to the men who had waged war against it. This led to a rapid deterioration of the rights and freedoms of Black Americans, who were soon disenfranchised, segregated, and subjected to systemic violence and oppression.

What the Confederacy couldn't win on the battlefield was that it won through federal surrender. And that surrender was paved with sympathy for the old Southern order—for the plantation class, for white supremacy, for the false dignity of men who built their legacy on bondage.

The Real Cost of Sympathy

This so-called "reconciliation" came at a cost. It meant the government chose peace with white Southerners over justice for Black Americans. It meant that white comfort mattered more than Black freedom. And it meant that the Confederacy, though defeated militarily, lived on through policies, symbols, and power structures that still shape our nation today, a heavy cost that we are still paying for.

This legacy is not confined to statues or street names. It's in the racial wealth gap, in the underfunding of Black schools, in voter suppression, in over-policing, in mass incarceration, and in every structural inequity we're still fighting to dismantle.

Conclusion: Forgiving Treason, Forgetting the Freed

The United States didn't show sympathy to the Confederacy during the war but showered the South with sympathy afterward. It did so by refusing to prosecute traitors. By denying reparations to the formerly enslaved. By allowing monuments to white supremacy to dominate public space. And by prioritizing national unity over racial justice.

That wasn't just a failure of policy. It was a failure of principle. And it's a failure we are still living with today.

 Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law.