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Summary Of Reconstruction By David Foner

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The concept of the Reconstruction was a “second founding” of the nation is based on the results of the Reconstruction. David Blight states in his lecture that the Reconstruction represented “… great change, great experimentation, change…” and the leadership “… rewrote the country you live in.” What evidence is there to support Blight’s argument? Foner’s A Short History of the Reconstruction provides some evidence. According to Foner, the Reconstruction Act inspired blacks where they achieve some type of parity with whites. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments would give some support to Foner’s belief. Elections to political office, prosperity in business, and mobility were part of this idea of Blight’s, but there was another side to this that was felt more strongly within America. …show more content…

The counterrevolution Blight speaks of defines the second founding for the freedom the blacks achieved was in effect short lived even with the changes in law. I would imagine the opinionated Blight had some subtle cheap shots about President Johnson, similar to those he had emitted in his course about the political groups he disagrees with. It is Johnson, the head of a country, who could have altered the direction this “second founding” would take. Blight, without much of an argument from me, ranks Johnson a “minus two on the list of presidents.” Other than the few minor “cheap shots” made about Johnson, there was one statement that Blight makes that gives an indication of the black plight after the Civil War; “He was not only not anti-slavery, he was an open racist.” Johnson believed America should be a white man’s country forever, even though originally it was controlled by another

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