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Civil War Reconstruction Essay

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The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges. Northerners assumed that martial law and the military’s role in the south would end in 1865. They expected the southerners to acknowledge defeat by treating blacks justly, rejecting Confederate leaders, and embraced southern Unionists. None of these things happened. Encouraged by President Andrew Jackson’s Reconstruction policy, which imposed no server penalties on the south, unashamed southerners elected former Confederates to state, local, and national offices, formed militia units composed of ex-soldiers, passed …show more content…

Grant and Stanton’s agreement, issued orders permitting military personnel who believed the South's civil courts denied them justice to have suits transferred to federal courts. Law passed the Congress-Army alliance established a separate army for Reconstruction duty. The Command of the Army Act and the Tenure of Office Act kept Grant and Stanton in their positions. Grant and Stanton, acting in concert with Congress, were the dominant voice affecting the Army in the south. To prevent organized resistance, Congress disbanded southern militia units and prohibited new ones from being raised without its approval. Southerners did not give up their war for white supremacy and home rule. The north’s obvious desires for peace and its growing indifference to the fate of southern Republicans encouraged Democrats to act boldly. Democrats planned race riots and battled Republican militia prior to elections, in time to keep Republicans from the polls but too late for Washington to send regulars to police the voting. What occurred was not indiscriminate Klan-style violence, but a calculated insurgence as the last unredeemed states fell to

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