preview

How Did The South End Reconstruction

Decent Essays

Reconstruction is “the process by which the states that had seceded were reorganized as part of the Union after the Civil War”. The year 1876 marked the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and also the ending of Reconstruction. Although this year was to celebrate a document symbolizing freedom, it also marked the end of civil rights for blacks. Both the North and the South played a role in ending Reconstruction, it was Southern intimidation and violence that killed reconstruction. The North was not the main reason that Reconstruction ended, but the North’s attitude was slightly racist and distracted which helped in the end of Reconstruction. Reconstruction was not the only problem in America: national issues became a huge …show more content…

This attitude was ultimately the end of Reconstruction. The South acted harshly upon their racist ways: intimidation and violence affected the citizens and political activists working towards Reconstruction. Supremacist groups, like the Ku Klux Klan caused fear. Two white men are holding guns up to a black voters head trying to persuade him to vote for the Democratic Party. In this, the white men are trying to end support of Radical Republicans, who the free blacks were voting for, and to force blacks to vote for Democrats. This shows the South’s harsh intimidation and violence the Ku Klux Klan used. The Ku Klux Klan also targeted government officials. The Ku Klux Klan used violence in hopes of influencing Abram Colby to give away his position in office to a white man. This incident is an example of what blacks were exposed to while in the South: being randomly assaulted and left for dead by the Klansmen. John Stephens, a white government official, was stabbed five or six times and then hanged on a hook in the Grand Jury room. No one was safe from the horror of the Ku Klux Klan in South, and tegardless of race, white supremacists did everything in their power to prevent Reconstruction from continuing in America. Through use of violence and intimidation, Southerners worked to run Radical Republicans out of government and to ultimately end

Get Access