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White Southerners During The Reconstruction Era

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For white Southerners, they faced many problems during the Reconstruction era. What was the Reconstruction era? The Reconstruction era was a period in time that took place right after the Civil War around 1865. And this was when President Abraham Lincoln began making his plans for the physical, economic, social, and political rehabilitation in the American South. Many republicans wanted to change Southern society and politics. These things were aimed to helping out the South. Many White Southerners did not agree that there even needed to be reconstruction, and they argued and fought the changes that were being imposed on them by the Northerners, Republicans, and anyone else in the federal government. So what was Reconstruction? Reconstruction was the rebuilding of Southern government, society, infrastructure, …show more content…

Not all Southerners felt the same way about Reconstruction. Some did not like it and some were okay with it. Some whites embraced the new land in the South, and others reacted hostility. And they feared social and political change. An article called, “Journal of Kate Stone”, is about a young white Southern girl who kept little journal entries about everything that was happening during the Reconstruction era. She talked about how the Northerners disliked the Southerners. The Fifteenth Amendment also failed to give women their voting rights. So “Elizabeth Cady and Susan B. Anthony condemned the Republicans’ “negro first” strategy and pointed out that women remained “the only class of citizens wholly unrepresented in the government”” (Roark 426). This is how the women acted towards not being able to having the right to vote back then. Activist women stated that women should not trust in man. The Fifteenth Amendment played as the early feminist movement from its abolitionist roots. And these feminists established a suffrage crusade that attracted millions of women into the political

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