Why Northerners Killed Reconstruction

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)

Imagine you're watching a baseball game. Both teams working with a strong will power so they can get that victorious and prideful win. Imagine that exact reaction from both the North and South. One defending reconstruction, the other trying to eliminate it. The North and the South were involved in the Civil War, and were both focused on their main goal. North in which wanted freedom for the slaves while the South wanted to preserve slavery as well as State’s Rights. This was a major situation that has gone down in history even to this day. So who killed reconstruction exactly?

It can be said that the South began the Civil War from a winning position. They had declared their independence, formed their own country and government, and they needed only to keep what they already had. But this was a monumental task as the government was required to protect every inch of land within the Confederacy. As a new country, the Confederacy needed to demonstrate the ability to defend its own territory from external threat. Without this ability, the Confederacy could never receive the international recognition and support it needed to survive. Aside from this reason, the South also needed to protect the institution of slavery from outside interference. If the Northern armies took control of a particular Southern area, the Confederates felt that they would free all the slaves, thus destroying the entire structure of society and its economic value. Because of this, Jefferson Davis was forced to devise a flawed war strategy which attempted to preserve the entire Confederacy at the cost of concentrating his forces.

With the sources given, it makes it hard to push the culpability on one singular side, on the grounds that each party made it difficult for the Reconstruction process to prosper fully. However, the question of the essay asked who killed Reconstruction and the liability of that verdict falls on the North. Reconstruction’s vitality was already dwindling after withstanding several blows from the “Southern Resistance,” but the Election of 1876 was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Rutherford B. Hayes knew he had to give the southerners some type of incentive to guarantee the vote from the south.

Southerners objected to the northerners’ views in debates on these issues, because they felt that the individual states should have more say in making political decisions, rather than having the federal government dictate laws for all of the states. In addition, most southerners felt that changes proposed by northerners were designed to benefit northern industries at the sake of southern agriculture. As Fehrenbacher says, one of the major reasons for “Southern disaffection” in the years prior to the war was the “sense of having been reduced to economic vassalage by the commercial and industrial interests of the Northeast”

1 Historians assess numerous reasons in assessing North’s success over the South in the Civil War. North was more developed and industrialized like factories and workshops, had definite edge in manpower of military age males, transportation, railroads and resources. Some historians blame on weak southern economic demographics and psychological reasons for the confederate defeat. “The south “whipped itself” because it did not believe strongly in its cause... While the North could allegedly call on the full fervor of American nationalism and antislavery idealism, the south was saddled with the morally dubious enterprise of defending slavery and was engaged in breaking up a union of hallowed origin for which many southerners still had a lingering reverence. It has even been suggested that large numbers of loyal confederates had a subconscious desire to lose the war”. (Source-1) North’s victory is due or ascribed to its better cause and morale.

First, the South couldn’t have won the civil war because state’s rights prevented unification of the South. The very issue that created the Confederacy helped to destroy it. In waging war, the South faced problems of politics and government that greatly complicated its problem of economic mobilization. No one would deny the troublesome effect of the conflict generated by differing ideas of how best to protect liberty and to organize southern society for the war effort. Southern people insisted upon retaining their democratic liberties in wartime, which proved fatal for the South. They had to struggle with a “confederacy formed by

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

In the end both the North and South were at fault for the failure of reconstruction however Southern Resistance was the more significant problem Even though the main downfall of the reconstruction was the Southern's resistance the North also contributed to the problem. The Northern's saw other things as bigger problems such as corruption (Doc C) and the racist opinions of blacks being a part of the government (Doc D). Northern started focusing on other things beside the problems with racism and this causes there to be less effort to be put on the issue. After a while Northern's started to give up and started putting more time into other things.

The most important factor was slavery, the South wasn’t for slavery, but the money it made them. The North, however, hated the thought of it, and the last straw for the South was when President Lincoln was elected. He was a member of the anti-slavery Republican Party and got elected without being on the ballot for 10 Confederate States, so the South got offended and thought that he was against them. I believe that the South had every right to get mad because if you feel threatened, you defend yourself. Plus, if a president, someone who is supposed to represent you and your country, doesn’t give you a choice to vote or not vote in 10 states, you feel like they aren’t fit to lead you.

For Northerners the hope was that the idea of free labor would transform the South into a land of opportunity for all. Freemen working for their own wages would be able to gain their own economic and societal well-being. “ In the North, ostensibly, any hardworking individual could rise from the dependence of wage labor to economic autonomy”(Foner 98). The North was also divided on what to do with the South the after the war. Leaders like Senator Thaddeus Stevens argued for confiscation of land and punishing the planter class that had brought about the war He said “The duty of the government, was to punish the rebel belligerents, and so weaken their hands that they may never again endanger the union” (Masur 81). He was opposed by others like Senator John Sherman he stated “if we exclude from voting the rebels of the South, who compose nearly all of the former voting population, what becomes of the republican doctrine that all government must be founded on the consent of the governed”? (Congressional Globe, 39 Cong. 2 Sess. Vol. 37, pt. 3, p.1564) The Republicans of the North also wanted to expand their party into the South following the

Obviously, this was a foolhardy move by the North. The amnesty of Southerners gave racist Southerners another chance to dominate the South with racism and hate. The North also had failed to stop black codes. These laws restricted African Americans’ rights such as congregating, bearing arms, working for other African Americans, and coming within town limits (Black Codes). Finally, the North was oblivious to the antics of the Ku Klux Klan, a white nationalist hate group. After the murder of John W. Stephens, Albion Tourgee claimed that he had “very little doubt that I (sic) shall be one of the next victims” (Tourgee, 1870). If Albion Tourgee had so little doubt that he would be a victim of the Ku Klux Klan, then it was probably not safe for Republicans, scalawags, and carpetbaggers in the South during Reconstruction. The North was responsible for providing safety in the South for Republicans, carpetbaggers, scalawags, and African Americans. This would have proved that the North was negligent. Therefore, if the North had not been negligent, the African Americans, scalawags, and carpetbaggers would have been safe during and after Reconstruction even if the South had intentions to harm them.

A question that is frequently asked by people; why did the Confederacy lose the Civil War? The larger number of union troops is what most historians think. Within the book The South vs. the South by William W. Freehling gives a whole other perspective and bring the reader an entirely new answer to the question. The Author as well splits the answer into two being, “the defeat of the Confederate nation can be attributed to two interrelated groups: Southern white anti-Confederates and Southern black anti-Confederates.” Throughout the South vs. The South the author argues that anti-Confederate Southerners specifically, border state whites and southern blacks helped cost the Confederacy the war.

If the South had been more divided they might have been more willing to compromise.

By 1870, the Northerner lost interest in reconstructing the south. The north tried to reconstruct the south and change southerners attitudes about black people. Although they failed at this because many southerners were still racists and believed that the white race was superior to others, blacks were not as good as southern white men. To add to that, the Northerners lost interest in the reconstruction, which gave southerners a chance to gain control of their state governments again.