The North’s negligence also contributed to the end of Reconstruction. The North had failed to notice the many racially motivated atrocities that occurred in the South durin...
The South won in Reconstruction in many ways. Rebuilding the South was one of its major focuses. Several canals, bridges, and railroads were rebuilt with Reconstruction funds. The Republicans in Congress agreed with southern legislatures on how important business was. For this, a large amount of money was gathered to help the South’s reconstruction. Even though slavery was abolished with the passing of the 13th Amendment, it still existed in the South in the forms of “Black Codes” and cults like the Ku Klux Klan. In conclusion, Lincoln won the war for the North, but President Johnson won Reconstruction for the South by allowing them to create their own laws to keep the former slaves down and keeping their Southern lifestyles.
An example of the KKK using violence was “John W. Stephens, State Senator from Caswell, is dead. He was foully murdered by the Ku-Klux in the Grand Jury room of the Courthouse.” This was making a big impact on Reconstruction because the KKK was killing anybody that supported Reconstruction. Another piece of evidence of the KKK killing reconstruction was, “[the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, “Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?” “They said I had voted for Grant and had carried the Negroes against them. About two days before they whipped me they offered me $5,000 to go with them and they said they would pay me $2,500 in cash if I would let another man to go the legislature in my place.” This negatively impacted reconstruction because the KKK were killing and bribing anybody who voted the Radical Ticket. Overall, there’s plenty of reasons the KKK put a negative impact on the Reconstruction of the
South resistance killed reconstruction because they had KKK. KKK is a terrorist group. In Document
During and succeeding the Era of Reconstruction, African American lives were reformed in very substantial ways. Most African Americans thought of Reconstruction as an opportunity to improve the lives of their entire race. They thought it would help them bring equality to their people. However, Reconstruction showed many African Americans how difficult it was to survive independently. Once they left their plantations, they had nowhere to live. African Americans living in the south struggled to find food and shelter. To make matters much worse, Southern Whites were beginning to fight to retain southern white supremacy. “Reconstruction did not provide African Americans with either the legal protections or the material resources to ensure anything
On March 6, 1875, Blanche Kelso Bruce assumed the office of United States Senator for the state of Mississippi. Like many others who have served in the upper house of the United States Congress, Bruce possessed considerable civic experience, including service on the Mississippi Levee Board and as Bolivar County Sheriff. Nevertheless, Bruce bore a critical distinction that, to this day, sets him apart from any other man or woman to have served as a senator. For Blanche Kelso Bruce entered the world in 1841 as a slave, consigned to a system of racial bondage that sustained the American South from the 1600s until 1865. Fortunately for Bruce, a period extending from 1860 until 1877, entailing the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, saw the overthrow of slavery in the South and a drastic revolution in American constitutional law. These changes provided black Americans with the same rights granted to traditionally-free whites; however, for all the progress Bruce’s senatorial appointment symbolized, genuine social transformation failed to accompany the constitutional revolution. As a variety of amendments and federal laws enshrined the political rights of black Americans, systemic racism regained its place of honor in Southern society, replacing the blatancy of slavery with equally destructive terrorism and economic oppression.
After the Civil War the whole country suffered a great loss of life and industry. Entire cities were destroyed piercing the economy; the South was particularly affected by the war. Directly after the war the Klan saw much activity trying to get Democrats in office that would not support the advancements of former slaves. Eventually by the end of the 1880’s the South seemed to be more st...
In 1865 the beginning of the end of the Civil War was in effect called “Reconstruction”. The purpose of Reconstruction was to make the United States a unified nation once again. Reconstruction was a success in the sense of the southern states ratified the constitution and chose not to secede. The southern states also agreed to pledge loyalty to the union and ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. On the other hand, with the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, by pulling the troops out of the South white slave owners regained power and the south slowly went back to the ways of the “old south”. The end of Reconstruction was influenced by specific causes such as: the northerners exhaustion with fighting the south and trying to punish the Klu Klux Klan, Radical Republicans being struck down by the Supreme Court, and white unionists, carpetbaggers, and scalawags being pushed out of the South by the Klu Klux Klan (Reconstruction (1865-1877)).
America has gone through many hardships and struggles since coming together as a nation involving war and changes in the political system. Many highly regarded leaders in America have come bestowing their own ideas and foundation to provide a better life for “Americans”, but no other war or political change is more infamous than the civil war and reconstruction. Reconstruction started in 1865 and ended in 1877 and still to date one of the most debated issues in American history on whether reconstruction was a failure or success as well as a contest over the memory, meaning, and ending of the war. According to, “Major Problems in American History” David W. Blight of Yale University and Steven Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania take different stances on the meaning of reconstruction, and what caused its demise. David W. Blight argues that reconstruction was a conflict between two solely significant, but incompatible objectives that “vied” for attention both reconciliation and emancipation. On the other hand Steven Hahn argues that former slaves and confederates were willing and prepared to fight for what they believed in “reflecting a long tradition of southern violence that had previously undergirded slavery” Hahn also believes that reconstruction ended when the North grew tired of the 16 year freedom conflict. Although many people are unsure, Hahn’s arguments presents a more favorable appeal from support from his argument oppose to Blight. The inevitable end of reconstruction was the North pulling federal troops from the south allowing white rule to reign again and proving time travel exist as freed Africans in the south again had their civil, political, and economical position oppressed.
Despite all of Reconstruction’s promises and successes, the era included many failures, too. One such failure was the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and other racially prejudiced groups in the South that promoted violence towards African Americans. Another failure involved the corruption seen during Reconstruction by both the North and South. The carpetbaggers who were Northerners helped spread corruption in the Reconstruction Era by moving from their home state in the North securing a political office or position in the South to carry out the plans of the Radical Republicans. In the South, many local governments disenfranchised or created poll taxes for African American voters enabling them to vote.
People attending schools before 1960’s were learning about certain “unscrupulous carpetbaggers”, “traitorous scalawags”, and the “Radical Republicans”(223). According to the historians before the event of 1960’s revision, these people are the reason that the “white community of South banded together to overthrow these “black” governments and restore home rule”(223). While this might have been true if it was not for the fact that the “carpetbaggers were former Union soldiers”, “Scalawags… emerged as “Old Line” Whig Unionists”(227). Eric Foner wrote the lines in his thesis “The New View of Reconstruction” to show us how completely of target the historians before the 1960’s revision were in their beliefs.
The most critical issue raised by the North’s victory was the South acceptance of transition of freedom for former slaves. Since most of southern whites did not agree with the idea of freedmen, they created several ways to foreclose the blacks to exercise their rights. The South utilized dirty tactics to preserve the idea of slavery, such as laws as the black codes, lynching and other violent ways promoted by groups known as Ku Klux Klan.
... and slavery left millions of newly freed African Americans in the South without an education, a home, or a job. Before reconstruction was put in place, African Americans in the South were left roaming helplessly and hopelessly. During the reconstruction period, the African Americans’ situation did not get much better. Although helped by the government, African Americans were faced with a new problem. African Americans in the South were now being terrorized and violently discriminated by nativist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Such groups formed in backlash to Reconstruction and canceled out all the positive factors of Reconstruction. At last, after the Compromise of 1877, the military was taken out of the South and all of the Reconstruction’s efforts were basically for nothing. African Americans in the South were back to the conditions they started with.
... The cause was forfeited not by Republicans, who welcomed the African-American votes, but to the elite North who had concluded that the formal end of slavery was all the freed man needed and their unpreparedness for the ex-slaves to participate in the Southern commonwealth was evident. Racism, severe economic depression, an exhausted North and troubled South, and a campaign of organized violence toward the freed man, overturned Reconstruction. The North withdrew the last of the federal troops with the passing of The Compromise of 1877. The freed slaves continued to practice few voting rights until 1890, but they were soon stripped of all political, social and economic powers. Not until the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s were the freedoms that were fought for by our Republican forefathers nearly 100 years before, finally seen through to fruition.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, it was followed by an era known as Reconstruction that lasted until 1877, with the goal to rebuild the nation. Lincoln was the president at the beginning of this era, until his assassination caused his vice president, Andrew Johnson to take his place in 1865. Johnson was faced with numerous issues such as the reunification of the union and the unknown status of the ex-slaves, while compromising between the principles of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. After the Election of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, a former war hero with no political experience, became the nation’s new president, but was involved in numerous acts of corruption. Reconstruction successfully reintegrated the southern states into the Union through Lincoln and Johnson’s Reconstruction Plans, but was mostly a failure due to the continued discriminatory policies against African Americans, such as the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and sharecropping, as well as the widespread corruption of the elite in the North and the Panic of 1873,