During the 1800’s, the United States faced one of the biggest threats to their nation to this day. Opposing views of slavery drew a wedge between the countries’ Northern and Southern societies, leading to the Civil War, emancipation of all slaves, and an attempt at reconstructing the broken nation. In the novel Forever Free by Eric Foner, he does a great job at exposing the sad truths of this era. Foner begins by discussing the events that led up to the Civil War in 1861, while emphasizing the dispute between the North and the South over slavery. The Northern states had all applied for gradual emancipation by the nineteenth century, but on the other hand, the Southern states were not budging. They believed that “slavery was their truth.” …show more content…
After talking about specific African Americans and their horrid encounters with the Ku Klux Klan, Foner writes, “While most white southerners were law-abiding citizens, they seemed willing to forgive the Klan’s excesses because they shared the organization’s ultimate goal—the overthrow of Reconstruction and the restoration of white supremacy,” (Foner 174). The fact that the Southerners were willing to forgive the KKK after they had killed and tortured hundreds of African Americans is appalling. Also, the quote proves that with so many citizens supporting the overthrow of Reconstruction, there was no chance that it would be successful in the long run because deep down, half of the nation did not care about the rights of African Americans. To add on, the opponents of Reconstruction despised it so much because they viewed it as an era of “Negro rule” as if the Blacks were trying to take over the country when in reality, they were just trying to achieve basic rights and protections from the government. In the epilogue, Foner states that the reason he wrote the novel was to accurately describe the sad truths of this era and to prove wrong the idea that Reconstruction's achievements outweighed its failures. In this it proves that Foner himself thought Reconstruction was a massive …show more content…
Throughout the book, Foner places much emphasis on the ineffectiveness of the laws during Reconstruction and the repercussions it had on African Americans achieving racial justice. The fourteenth amendment, which was passed by the Senate in 1866 and later ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the United States, including African Americans. It also declared that states could not deprive anyone of their life, liberty, or property, and that everyone had equal protection under the law. Surely, one would think that since it was written in the law of the country that it would be practiced, but nonetheless, terrorist organizations like the KKK carelessly disobeyed the amendment and heartlessly tortured African Americans along with white Republicans who supported Reconstruction. Foner shows an example of some of the actions of the KKK when he explains the story of the Colfax massacre, “The bloodiest single act of carnage in Reconstruction took place in Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873, where fifty or more members of a Black militia unit were massacred after surrendering to armed whites…” (Foner 173). This event was not just an act of the KKK, but other Southern whites as well, and it truly represented the violence and mass terrorism of a time that was supposed to show progression in the treatment of
20 people lost their lives to the Ku Klux Klan that day, and although they succeeded with that event, it only grew the African American’s even stronger and more resilient as a
The very specific purpose that is clearly outlined the subtitle is at times at odds with the “four stories” Chalmers tells in the bulk of the text. However, within the structure of the four stories Chalmers clearly describes how the Klan became its own worst enemy and despite their intended purposes helped civil rights legislation pass at the federal level. This was due to Klan’s “traditional cultural” predisposition towards violence. Their taste for violence clashed with “the changing world of the 1960s, doing what Klansmen liked to do best helped bring about federal intervention , new national civil rights laws, trials in less sympathetic federal courts, and, eventually, guilty verdicts from local juries.”
On Sunday, September 15, 1963, there was an explosion that killed 4 girls and injured 22 others at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama (“Vigilance and Victory”). In spite of the deaths, this act of white supremacy was the one that united the nation to combat segregation and discrimination. The 4 KKK members who had induced such pain and sorrow in many Americans were Thomas Edwin Jr., Herman Frank Cash, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Bobby Frank Cherry. (“16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, Wikipedia”). These four men intended to slow down the progression of the Civil Rights Movement, but rather sprung it ahead into the creation of the Civil Rights Act which desegregated many public areas.
Eric Foner stated that the arching principles of the 14th Amendment are all people are entitled to "equal protection of the laws", state and federal citizenship for all, irrespective of race and origin, ensured "privileges and immunities” and the concept of the "due process of the law" (572). Through these principles, the 14th Amendment revolutionized the dynamics of freedom in the United States. Prior to the passage of the Amendment, former slaves were still not only considered to be lesser citizens by their former masters, but were also treated in a manner that reaffirmed this perspective (Foner 570). This mentality was rife among White Southerners, which is unsurprising considering that slavery is an institutionalized system that supported the South’s agrarian society and economy. The mindsets of White Northerners were markedly different to that of their Southern countrymen, largely because of the North’s inclination towards industrialization and globalization (Foner 561).
With this being said, President Abraham Lincoln was one of the few who kept the nations ongoing insecurity of slavery in mind. Knowing that there were still Americans throughout the Union that still preferred slavery but neglected their preferences for the sake of the Union. In light of the president’s presumptions on the focused intentions of the civil war, we observe the thoughts of Americans on the topic of slavery in the 1860’s. From the New York Harold in 1862, “what to Do with the Slaves when Emancipated,” the article reveals, “The policy of the abolitionists would be destructive: That of the President is benign.” Because this article presented by Northerners argues that the removal of slavery would harm the nation and provide further logic on why African Americans should be kept as slaves averting the possibility of whites performing the slave’s
By the 19th century, the northern states had either abolished slavery or finally find a way to slow the rate of it spreading even further than it was. “For a brief moment, the revolutionary upheaval appeared to threaten the continued existence of slavery as some slave holders provided for the emancipation of their slaves (foner ch.6)”. With conflicts over trade, taxes and government representation, the colonies were waiting at the starting line of a revolution that would later transfigure into the foundation of the United States of
“Slavery: From Declaration to Civil War” Introduction: Slavery is a topic that has been one of the most shocking yet natural around the world. Slavery is defined as “Coerced Labor” and “The most important form of labor in New World”. (Roark 72) This idea and action provokes mixed feelings in the heart and minds of everybody and still people allowed it.
A change in legislation brought slavery back to America in a new way. Tisbe explains, “The blatant racist President Andrew Johnson who ascended to the presidency after Lincon’s assassination, ordered that the redistributed lands be returned to former enslavers, and many freed people went back to working on the land under the sharecropping system”(Tisby, 91). Even though the slaves were freed and were not considered slaves under the law, they were still treated like slaves working under strenuous conditions for very little to no money. Not only was the sharping system implemented, but terrorist groups also aimed to disrupt the lives of Africans. The KKK was notorious for lynching, raping, and torturing Black Americans.
(page 99). The quote shows how the horrific acts of terrorism committed by the terrorist group known as the KKK was for no good reason and these acts were committed simply to spread terrorism in the South. The KKK’s rain of terror was more influential in the South due to the South being mainly comprised of confederate supporters. By the early 1870s, few federal troops remained in the South, just six thousand soldiers in all, spread among the eleven Klan-infested states, a land area that totaled more than 790,000 square miles. (page 101-102).
The thirteenth amendment stated that all former slaves were granted freedom. The reconstruction period, “did create the essential constitutional foundation for further advances in the quest for equality”. It laid the building blocks for the future building for civil rights not just for blacks but women and other minorities. Former slaves, “ found comfort in their family and in the churches they established”. Blacks took community in each other and bonded over the mutual idea of freedom .
American slavery has indeed caused some hardships in the past. Some viewed slavery negatively while yet other used believed that if you just obeyed your masters everything will be just fine. In the article’s that I will feature in this paper, “An Address to the Negroes in the State of New York” by Jupiter Hammon and “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” by David Walker, show two very different men who hold two very different views towards slavery. One suggests slaves to respect and obey their masters, never to rebel, and learn how to read, while the other pushes the issue about equality between whites and black, and suggests that slaves become rebellious towards their masters, while also making references to Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes
In the book “The Free State of Jones”, by Victoria Bynum, the war between the Union and the Confederacy was described. Not only that, but the author reveals many things about the war that is not widely known, or largely mistaken for something else. The style this book is written is not fiction, as it has raw facts splattered across the pages. One of the main topics that is covered in this book is slavery, and how the South contributed to it. Tying to that, the main character’s relationship with an African American woman is also mentioned.
Ira Berlin writes in her book, Many Thousand Gone; The first Two Centuries of Slavery in North America, about the development of slavery in North America. Areas in North America that are discussed range from Philadelphia, to New York, and from the Chesapeake Region to the low country of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Berlin discusses societies with slaves in the early to middle 1600s and continues as the regions developed into slave societies in the 1700s. In those times slave owners and slave interactions are addressed, as well as different lifestyles and approaches in plantations. These different items that Berlin addresses supports her thesis that as slavery developed in North America, it went through different stages.
Introduction: During the 1800’s, Slavery was an immense problem in the United States. Slaves were people who were harshly forced to work against their will and were often deprived of their basic human rights. Forced marriages, child soldiers, and servants were all considered part of enslaved workers. As a consequence to the abolition people found guilty were severely punished by the law.
With this belief that the KKK was “a part of an ‘Aryan’ tradition” being used at a such a crucial point in the film, it made white racists nostalgic about the good old days (Carter. pg 355). Racist whites believed that civilization needed saving, and the South needed to be “redeemed from shame” (Carter. pg 349) Seeing their people defend their “Aryan birthright” initiated the need for order and for the South to return to its ideal state (Carter.