The winner has always written the history books. So, it came as no surprise that after the North’s victory in the American Civil War, the South was seen as the villain during the Reconstruction Era, all while the North was innocent and spot-free. The truth, however, said differently. The North was not nearly as innocent in Reconstruction, to the point where the Northern states, as a whole, could have killed reconstruction altogether. Reconstruction, in simple terms, was the effort to bring the Southern states back into the nation and mend the Union as one after the Southern states seceded and caused the Civil War. This effort ended when President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered a removal of troops from the Southern states in 1877 – just 12 years …show more content…
While the fraudulent leadership was not what destroyed the movement, it caused people to turn their focus away from the problems that were relevant to the Southern half of the nation. First, political cartoons were popularly used to express public opinion, good or bad. In a cartoon from 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant is drawn searching and trying to reach the bottom of a barrel, filled with the scandals of the time, such as with the press, whiskey, and states. (Harper’s Weekly, 1876) Additionally, in the words of Gerald Danzer, “… Northern voters grew indifferent to event in the South. Weary of the ‘Negro Question’ and ‘sick of carpet-bag’ government, many Northern voters shifted their attention to such national concerns as … corruption in Grant’s administration…” (Gerald Danzer et al., The Americans, McDougal Littell, 1998.) Danzer attempted to relay to the reader that the Northerners were tired of hearing of all the problems but nothing was being done, so instead they started to just focus on something else entirely. Thirdly, Danzer explicitly stated that “… the tide of public opinion in the North began to turn against Reconstruction policies.” (Danzer) This statement was short but powerful against the Union states, and further proved how the North decided to blatantly turn their backs on the South and the …show more content…
Even the most pro-Freedmen, pro-equal rights Republicans vocalized opinions that rang loud and clear against the freedmen. For instance, the Boston Evening Transcript – a firmly pro-Freedmen publication - was quoted and said, “the blacks, as a people, are unfitted for the proper exercise of political duties,” that showed how even the most supportive Northerners thought that Blacks should not be equal. (Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001) Additionally, the publication said that the Freedmen needed to forget how cruel slavery was before they could become a politician, probably to prevent retaliation against whites for years of mistreatment towards Blacks. Thirdly, in Harper’s Weekly, an artist drew an image of South Carolina’s Legislature. In this image, the African-Americans who were in the legislature are portrayed as wild and unruly, which caused the Northerners to think that Freedmen should not be in positions that could change the laws. (The cover of Harper’s Weekly, March 14, 1874) All three of these instances show how some of the most pro-Freedmen Northerners held an overall racist opinion towards
Both southerners and northerners had to rebuild the south, but a lot of southerners rejected the help and just wanted it to be back to normal with slaves and cash crops. The question to this DBQ is: “North or South: Who destroyed the rebuilding of the south’s economy?”. The south resistence destroyed the the reconstruction even though the north forgot about the reconstruction, the KKK was distracting the north from the reconstruction by harassing the government
The people of the Confederate States were people who did not agree with Lincoln’s beliefs and ideas. President Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I think Lincoln said this quote because he is trying to say that even though the United States became two nations, it will not be able to go against its
There was much tension in the Reconstruction. The north killed Reconstruction in the south because the government frauds took away all President
Written with fervour, Toombs articulates how Lincoln’s election dooms the South to have their culture overwritten by northern lawmakers. Dwelling on the issue of slavery, the speech presents the argument that the new Republican President would violate each citizen’s right to property as affirmed in the Constitution. Believing that Lincoln would undermine this principle, Toombs exclaims that Southerners “stand without a shield, with bare bosoms presented to our enemies.” (57) This allusion to the sectionalist divide that causes the Secession Crisis presents the Northern states as aggressors against the traditions of the South.
In the 1870s fights broke out, people were murdered, and the country was in chaos. It left us wondering who's to blame for the end of Reconstruction? After the Civil war slaves became freedmen but they didn’t have rights. An era called Reconstruction by historians began. Some people supported it.
As you know being in an army could be quite difficult for soldiers. Both Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers train everyday and do certain duties to get ready for the American Civil War. However, there are huge differences between the two armies. Before the war started, most of the soldiers from both North and South had been farmers. If the Southerners did not farm they either became carpenters, mechanics, merchants, machinist, lawyers, teachers, blacksmiths, or a dentist.
The North had been pressuring the South for years at this point, but it had not yet done anything significant enough for their actions to be considered offensive. The governments of the southern states had begun to assemble an army. In South Carolina “the state legislature prepared to arm a defense force of 10,000 men” (Dew, 25). The thought of secession was one not focused upon the defence of the confederate state, rather the focus was upon the revolutionary aspect of it. In the document, the “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” they compare their leaving the union to the thirteen colonies leaving the control of the British Crown.
The South said the North took their property, murdered people, broke laws of the Congress, and so much more. The South believed that by electing Abraham Lincoln, the Union betrayed the Confederacy. “And finally, they have capped the mighty pyramid of unfraternal enormities by electing Abraham Lincoln on a platform and by a system which indicates nothing but the subjugation of the South and the complete ruin of her social, political and industrial institutions,” said the New Orleans Daily Crescent. The Union thought that while America was strong, the Confederacy was weak. According to the North, Southern states were guilty of secession and treason.
At the time, the Reconstruction period was undergoing and the South was
Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech in Savannah is unquestionably the most famous speech associated with the Confederacy. Stephens was speaking extemporaneously and later complained that his views had been distorted and taken out of context by Northern abolitionists. We have already seen that Alexander Stephens gave another version of the Cornerstone Speech a month later at the Virginia Convention. The fundamental racialist worldview articulated in both speeches is more or less the same: The status of the African negro in the Southern states was “the immediate cause” of secession. It was the “occasion” or “incident” of secession, which is to say, the spark that ignited the blaze.
After the Civil War in 1865, Republicans in Congress introduced a series of Constitutional Amendments to secure civil and political rights for African Americans. The right that gave black men the privilege to vote provoked the greatest controversy, especially in the North. In 1867, Congress passed the law and African American men began voting in the South, but in the North, they kept denying them this basic right (“African Americans,” 2016). Republicans feared that they would eventually lose control of Congress on the Democrats and thought that their only solution was to include the black men votes. Republicans assumed that all African American votes would go to all the Republicans in the North, as they did in the South and by increasing the
The American civil war led to the reunion of the South and the North. But, its consequences led the Republicans to take the lead of reconstructing what the war had destroyed especially in the South because it contained larger numbers of newly freed slaves. Just after the civil war, America entered into what was called as the reconstruction era. Reconstruction refers to when “the federal government established the terms on which rebellious Southern states would be integrated back into the Union” (Watts 246). As a further matter, it also meant “the process of helping the 4 million freed slaves after the civil war [to] make the transition to freedom” (DeFord and Schwarz 96).
The South decided to continue to fight about the ‘Carpet-Bag’ government and resisted the North’s help when it was offered. Reconstruction slowly died when the South kept resisting the help from the North. In the South, people such as the KKK took control of the South and the North got sick of it. Southerners resisted help and decided to use an corrupt government and ideas in the South.
Racism’s Impact on Reconstruction While the issue of slavery evidently contributed to the divide that resulted in the American Civil War, it is debated whether prevailing ideals of racism caused the failure of the era following the war known as Reconstruction. With the abolishment of slavery, many of the southern states had to reassemble the social, economic, and political systems instilled in their societies. The Reconstruction Era was originally led by a radical republican government that pushed to raise taxes, establish coalition governments, and deprive former confederates of superiority they might have once held. However, during this time common views were obtained that the South could recover independently and that African Americans
The utter contempt and loathing for the venerated Stars and Stripes, the abhorrence of the very words United States, the intense hatred of the Yankee on the part of these people.” The South perceived the North as a tyrannical power, and South Carolina’s secession emphasizes the relationship between the right to revolution and separation from the Union paying homage to the American Revolution. The Union’s defeat furthered the