The Americans By Douglas Littell, And The Panic Of 1873

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Reconstruction, what happened you were doing so well. Let’s find out what went wrong. The year of 1876 was a pretty crazy year. That year’s election was actually not decided by the voters, they candidates made a deal where Rutherford B. Hayes would get the presidency, but he would remove the troops in the South helping with Reconstruction. This year is also definitely in the running for most ironic year. This was the 100 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but that year also crushed the dreams of African Americans into the ground. So who really killed Reconstruction? The North killed because of the Panic of 1873, the government fraud, and the racism. Reconstruction was help from the North getting the South back on its feet. 1876 …show more content…

The Panic of 1873 was the widespread fear of the United States going into a depression and and the economy will fall. In The Americans by Douglas Littell, it states “...many Northern voters shifted their attention to such national concerns as the Panic of 1873” (Littell 515). The Panic of 1873 caused the majority of the North to focus on the national issue at hand. Also in Littell’s writing it says, “the tide of public opinion in the North began to turn against Reconstruction policies” (Littell 515). The Northern opinion also changed, not just the focus, the opinion of the voters turned away Reconstruction and most thought the panic was a bigger …show more content…

In the South, there was a group called the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. They would run rampant killing whoever they pleased, and no one would stop them. The KKK would kill political figures who supported Reconstruction or freedman. In a testimony to the Senate, Abram Colby states, “On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open , took me out of my bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead” (Colby 513). The KKK targeted African Americans and tortured them to death. This caused the carpetbaggers to leave and help end Reconstruction. This did happen, but the KKK were not held responsible causing the helpers from the North to leave. The KKK did cause them to leave but did not cause the end of Reconstruction. The panic and the government fraud clearly caused Reconstruction to end because it caused the Northern voters to shift their political views from Reconstruction to the issue at

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