Reasons For Reconstruction

Southern resistance killed reconstruction by having the Ku Klux Klan murdering

Nicholas Lemann begins his book “Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War” with the 1873 Colfax, Louisiana massacre where a White League militia comprised of former Confederate soldiers killed black Republican voters. The Colfax massacre was perhaps the bloodiest event of Reconstruction. Lemann views this event as a startup of what would happen later in Mississippi if Federal troops did not defend black voters. Lemann blames Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, for not stopping the White Line activity in Louisiana and Mississippi. Grant had worked hard to stop the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1870s with Congress passing legislation and Federal troops putting down Klan activity.

The Ending of Reconstruction It was the one hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and people were expecting great things. Reconstruction was off to a great start and people were welcoming the freedmen into the North. Reconstruction was a period after the Civil War where the North was helping build the South back up to what it was before the war. Blacks were even becoming senators just five years after the Civil war. Unfortunately the great Reconstruction era was coming to an end.

The Reconstruction was unsuccessfull because of some important reasons. First, the South was still aracist part of the United States because they created the Jim Crow Laws, what means that the people who lived and administratedthe South were not intelligent. The second example is that Abraham Lincoln, who started and incentivated the Reconstruction, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, so it made the Reconstruction process to be less efective. Finally, the last problem was the Solid South, it is a name that the South recieved because it was a solid white, solid racist and solid Democrat, what means that they were not able to support black people. Concluding, all of these examples shows why the Reconstruction was unsuccessfull

After the Civil War conditions were really bad because a lot of homes and personal properties were destroyed. Because of the War the Union lost 370,000 troop members and the Confederacy lost 260,000. Total 375,000 troop members were injured. Many civilians in the South died because of access to food was infrequent. I believe Reconstruction was necessary because after four long years of war they should move on from it and reunite as one.

All through the South in 1865 and 1866, states governing bodies passed a progression of Black Codes, which were intended to give whites control over the previous slaves. Whites had the ability to "catch unemployed blacks, fine them for vagrancy, and contract them out to private businesses to fulfill the fine".1 Consequently, African Americans were not regarded with equivalent rights as whites, which was the same as amid servitude. Further, these Black Codes gave all the ability to whites to fine African Americans for things that whites couldn 't be fined for, making disparity and a chain of importance of races like in bondage. Next, the South Carolina code incorporated an agreement structure for dark "hirelings" who consented to work for white "masters".2 therefore, the Black Codes attempted to push African Americans once more into bondage by reusing the names "worker" and "expert", as they were utilized before the Civil War. The reuse of these names upheld by the state government belittled the African Americans the same way that these titles did amid subjugation.

Dr. Philips, in this source, tells about the formation of the KKK in Mississippi as a further means to keep freedmen “in their place” in regards to wanting to vote and run for

The South killed reconstruction because the KKK was murdering people, they were creating fear everywhere in the South, and because of racism. A reason that the South killed reconstruction was because the KKK was murdering people. The KKK began to murder government officials and supporters of reconstruction. “He was foully murdered by the Ku-Klux in the Grand Jury room on Saturday.”

Southerners felt as though they were being given the short end of the stick, when in reality roles were just being evenly distributed. The impact that reconstruction had on southerners was viewed as wrong in their eyes. However, on the flip side the reconstruction was simply making things fair, which they didn't like. With the reconstruction people were now justifying and murder against blacks, simply stating that it would essentially put things back into order. From this hate, hate organizations, as I mentioned previously, were created.

From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan’s goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by Southern blacks after the Civil War. At first it was formed as a social club for Confederate soldiers after the war, but it soon progressed to be one of the biggest terror groups in American history. Most Klan action was designed to intimidate black voters and white

While the legislation of the radical Republicans brought much-needed measures of radical equality to America, their enforcement of such measures came at a time when the South was already looking for reasons to resent the Union, and the military action certainly didn't help the concept of remaining on good terms. Corruption under these regimes were rampant as well, in which radical government schemers took advantage of the money provided for new public programs and used it to pad their own wallets. The Ku Klux Klan began because of the backlash from the hastily-passed 15th Amendment and would proceed to beat, threaten, and murder blacks and Republicans alike, creating an atmosphere of fear and a movement that would persist until the 1920s. In the end, the results of Congress's actions served to alienate Republicanism in the South, and the good they attempted to do for freed blacks was ultimately undermined by Southern voting stipulations, governmental corruption, and a Northern disinterest in the plight of African Americans. Lincoln's plan never saw fruition and never had the chance to evolve as necessary; only the bare ideas were in place, and written before the war was even over.

The beginning of the Reconstructionist era was the perfect time for the KKK to attack the black community and Republicans politically, eventually leading to social structure and economy becoming targets as well. The South may have lost the Civil War and the slaves may have been emancipated, but the Klan wasn’t going to let history forget the Confederate movement. But their main goal extended further than the Confederate movement’s, which was to preserve the Southern way of life and the institution of slavery. Since they had lost all this and more, the Klan’s main objective was to maintain white

On the other hand the North thought that the blacks were unfit for politics and that they need to forget about the conditions of how slavery was. “The blacks, as a people, are unfitted for the proper exercise of political duties… The rising generation of… blacks needed a period of probation and instruction; a period… long enough for the black to have forgotten something of his condition as a slave and learned much of the true method of gaining honorable subsistence and of performing the duties of any position to which he might aspire.” The North thinks that the blacks are unfit for politics but in the South the blacks are being held at gunpoint. The Reconstruction was about helping blacks not killing

One of the most used tactics by Klan, mainly the Reconstruction Klan, was fear. The Reconstruction Klan had a realization that in trying to be mysterious they gained the ability to "control the ignorant and superstitious African Americans and southern politicians from the north (1). So, groups of Klansmen in robes and other out of the ordinary costumes would visit African Americans and politicians whom they viewed as defiant (2). They would then proceed to use scare tactics in the form of "supernatural" events that played off the beliefs of dissenters' to keep people subdued (2).

Upon this, the Klu Klux Klan chose to dedicate themselves to a campaign of violence against both black and white Republican leaders and voters. They did this as an effort to change the policies of Radical Reconstruction in the South (“Klu Klux Klan”). They wanted to reinstate white supremacy in the South as to how it was back before the Revolution and before Reconstruction. Other groups, such as the Knights of the White Camelia and the White Brotherhood, joined in on this with the Klu Klux Klan. Due to this dedication by these groups and the KKK, at least ten percent of the black legislators that were elected between 1867 and 1868 were subject to violence due to discrimination.