Who Killed Reconstruction? The question "Who Killed Reconstruction" is a hotly-debated topic that often divides opinion. We have the apathetic North and the racist South, the abolitionist and ones that do not want to go forward. First, lets look at the South or the Confederacy. The South had a huge economic drop when slavery became illegal in America after the Civil War. Since blacks were free, had the right to vote, and was granted citizenship, many white Southerners wanted to keep them in their place. They thought of many ways to make sure that blacks in the south were kept as second class citizens, but the government proposed the 14th, 15th, and 16th amendment to make sure that the South would not do anything to keep blacks from getting …show more content…
Conservatism in the South stopped another act of social progression. Who Killed Reconstruction? Well I would say both, but we have to think about another factor in this issue. The South made it hard for abolitionist to push for a change. With the killing of Politicians, the radicalism of the KKK, the literacy test, the black fear... They were willing to ruin their economy all to keep a group of people down in social status. Even though the North was equal, but not fair. Even if Republicans were apathetic and just gave up... The South it the blame for the killing of reconstruction as that was their goal all along. Democrats, KKK members, and racist southerners wanted reconstruction to end. We can also say that, in a way, Republicans wanted reconstruction to change. There were bigger issues at hand and it was economically draining on the South. A lot of people up North did not like the fact that black Americans were soon sharing a social status with white Americans. The North was no safe space for blacks, there was still prejudice and unfair brutality. One of the only reasons the North was anti-slavery was because they simply did not use it, they used poor white people and other lower class minorities to boost the Northern Industrial work. But that did not stop the inherent prejudice that a majority of people had during that
The reconstruction was an era when African Americans tried to fit in and to rebuild the South. The reconstruction started in 1876. Some troops started to leave the South. The KKK was also starting to rebel against the government. The North took their focus of reconstruction and focused on scandals. This essay is trustworthy because I used primary sources. The South was the cause for the end of the reconstruction because the KKK was killing people, KKK was forcing people to vote democratic ticket, and South did nothing about the KKK.
Radical Republicans wanted to enact a far-reaching transformation of Southern social and economic life, permanently ending the old planter class system, and favored granting freed slaves citizenship and voting rights. After the war, they came to believe whites in the South were seeking
They were opposed to the expansion of slavery and called for Congress to prevent the further expansion of slavery into new territories. They believed that by confining slavery to its current boundaries, it would gradually be eradicated. The formation of the Republican Party was one of the primary reasons of how the political landscape changed in the Union.
The truth is both sides ruined the chances of reconstruction.They are both at fault. The south and the northerners had an equal part at failing to continue the reconstruction because from the south there was an organization; a cult called the Ku klux Klan.The kkk did not accept african americans. They were so cruel and inhumane to them the kkk would slaughter , manipulate, and even taunt them till the african americans would fear them(Doc A, B)As for the North , there was a lot of corruption due to Former President grant that committed fraud and caused the “ panic of 1873 “ which caused lots of jobs to discontinue and people to worry from it.(doc C)
The Radical Republicans found Lincoln’s approach far too lenient, and strongly expressed their opposition. They zealously sought to punish the South for initiating the Civil War. The Radical Republicans criticized the President’s Ten Percent Plan, and were resolute in readmitting southern states only after slavery had been abolished, the newly freed black slaves (freedmen) were given full rights, and the power of the planter class destroyed.
If the South had been more divided they might have been more willing to compromise.
Every effort the North made to pacify the South and/or to help the Blacks was blatantly rejected by the South. If the North declared one law, the South would find a loophole and thus the country was a mess of disunity and debate over Constitutional changes (?) (Doc. A and B). This tug-of-war is also anther reason for why no social changes resulted from constitutional changes from 1860 to 1877. Even if the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were wholeheartedly radical and revolutionary constitutional changes, social changes, never mind developments, were not in any way possible because of strong Southern resistance (Doc. G).
Reconstruction has been brutally murdered! For a little over a decade after the Civil War, the victorious North launched a campaign of social, economic, and political recovery in the former Confederacy and to readmit the land in the former Confederacy back into the United States as states. Reconstruction yielded many benefits for African Americans. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments freed African Americans, made them citizens, and gave them the right to vote respectively. The Freedmen’s Bureau also provided African Americans and poor whites with education, jobs, and supplies. Despite this, Reconstruction was cut short in 1877. The North killed Reconstruction because of racism, negligence, and distractions.
Southerns did a lot of things to try to resist reconstruction. Southerns did things such as killing supporters of the reconstruction with the KKK(Doc A) and putting resistance between the blacks and their rights such as voting(Doc B) Southerns beat up black people in attempt to stop them from executing their rights. They also tried to bribe an African American man who was involved in the senate committee. Abram Colby was an African American man who was beat up in the woods, whipped, and left for dead for favoring voting for the radical ticket. They tried their best to destroy and prevent any black rights instead of committing to reconstruction.
"The North won the war, but the South won the peace," is a statement to explain what happened during the process of reconstructing the country. From events and evidence the south was always restricting the power that the north gained from winning the war. The north was proudly able to keep their heads up and go in the direction they set out
The North may have won the war, but they did a horrible job in trying to win the peace. The south had their new form of slavery, which was contained in the "Black Codes"; laws passed throughout the South that laid heavy restrictions on what, who, and where African-Americans could be. President Johnson saw that the only way to get the freedmen as subordinates again was to let the south back in he started signing pardons so fast that they had to assign an office to help him keep up. Johnson didn't interfere with the south and they continued their plantations, with the plantation owners running the south, in essence becoming exactly what they were before the war. It was like it had never happened. When
The North and the South were far from settling the slave issue. Another reason that caused the South to go to war was the difference in economic policies. The North was expanding more in the commercial and industrial side while the South was reliant on agriculture. Cities and factories had developed in the North and in the South, it was still staple producing and agrarian. The North’s industry was beginning to dominate its economy while the South was still mainly based on agriculture. The South only produced manufactured goods for consumption and the North were able to export manufactured goods. The taxes and tariff was unfair to the South. The Tariff Act of 1832 put high import fees on all European manufactured good, which was established to protect the Northern industries. The South’s reaction to the Act was a threat to secede from the Union. Railroads were also built to bond the northern tier of states. This made transportation easier in the Northeast than in the South. The Northeast traded with the West while the South can trade only by sea. " They wanted to promote the industry of the New England states, at the expense of the people of the South and their industry" In politics, the North had an advantage over the South. The North was more populated than the South and the South only counted slaves which was big part of their populations as * of a person. Since the House of Representative was based on population
Growing up just North of the Mason-Dixon line I learned a version of history that includes the Northern states standing on principle. The North stood on the righteous side of the line that said no longer would slavery be tolerated. On the other side of the line was the South that depended on slavery and would revolt sooner than change their ways.
The Southerners white opposed to the confederacy at first there was some then a lot more, bringing it down. When Lincoln was elected president the white Southerners knew that he was against slavery. They felt that Lincoln should not take away their rights to have slavery they were completely opposed to it. The slavery was made up of both rich white and poor white that were worked as Negroes. They felt that the Republicans were going to eliminate slavery in Washington,
The abolitionist encounter commenced in the north then the country started to split over the difficulties between the North and the South, around the late 18th century. The North and the South were divisions of the United States established along diverse philosophies. The South stayed a mostly family agricultural although the North developed into a more commercial industry. Therefore, the social-cultural dissimilarities and governmental theories headed to discrepancies on several matters for instance taxes, bills and inner developments in addition to the rights of the states as opposed to federal rights.