divided, all flickers of hope that life would return as the way it had been once slowly sputtered a dying gasp. Since the Northerners reigned victorious, the rebel states remained at their mercy and bidding. The fact that the United States faced potential threats if they stayed divided prompted the government to start a phase of Reconstruction to repair the damage both fiscally and socially in the states.However, even though the North…
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) has been a controversial terroristic group over the years in the United States since their inception. They first came into existence in the “South” during radicalization of the “Reconstruction Era.” Actually, during “pre-civil war era,” “segregation of blacks” was the norm, as they were controlled by societal elites. Historical facts depict that this “organization” was originated upon great detestation by the “Klansmen” toward the newly “emancipated freedmen” for…
In a way, the Reconstruction of the United States is a prime example of why historiography exists for a number of reasons. The event happened so close in recent memory so as to occur in a time in which many records could be kept and in which history was already a well-established area of study. Furthermore, it is also so old as to allow for multiple interpretations throughout time and so impactful and controversial as to become a source for heated debates. Though history is the study of the past…
Since the birth of our nation, African Americans have undergone significant changes from slavery, the Reconstruction era and eventually the civil rights movement. These battles have been fought by prominent leaders both black and white. Some examples of early African American struggles include vicious crimes from southern whites that resulted in nearly zero prosecutions, voting rights controlled by violence and intimidation and sharecropping which kept them in debt. Certain laws were ignored…
Reconstruction began throughout the nation but mostly in the South following the civil war in 1865. It had many widely positive and negative consequences within the period that were felt both short term and long term for the North and the South which would ultimately lead to the ending of Reconstruction period. In this essay I will compare and contrast the many sides of the Reconstruction period from Presidential changes, corruption of government, freedoms of blacks, rebuilding of a nation and…
The end of the United States Civil War firmly addressed the governments view on the legality of slavery, but issues from the American slave era still lingered throughout the country. In particular the South was devastated physically and socially from the Civil War. Many southern towns such as Atlanta were completely destroyed physically and left desolate by the Union army, and the social structure of the cotton dependant south was completely upturned with the emancipation of the African slaves.…
further. Their hopes, however; were soon dashed by the reality of Reconstruction. They were subject to long-term discrimination and segregation by angry southerners, threatened by their freedom. Black Codes, later, Jim Crow Laws were introduced in Southern states to supress African-Americans and denied them the right to vote, serve on a jury and marry a white person. Southern stakeholders, left defeated…
After their loss in the American Civil War, the Southern states went through a difficult period of Reconstruction. Not only was most of the South’s land destroyed in the war, but they also had to change their currency and adapt to Northerners taking over their politics. It was due to these trying times that the Southerners established a set of beliefs and values about themselves they called the Lost Cause. Southerners claimed the Lost Cause was a social movement of remembering and honoring their…
Segregationists used the memory of slavery and the Civil War as a political tool to oppose desegregation in the southern United States. Politicians like George Wallace and the Dixiecrats used the guise of states rights to justify legal discrimination against Black Americans. The states rights rhetoric is explicitly tied to the white southerners’ memory of slavery and the Civil War —a memory these politicians appropriated to serve their cause. Wallace himself compared the Confederacy to the…
Over the course of four years, this country was torn apart in one of the bloodiest wars it 's ever seen, one that would now be recognized as the watershed of a new modern age. The subsequent decade of reconstruction was full of change, both good and bad, which would play a key role in molding the future of the union. This change came in numerous different forms, and swept across the north and the south alike. A surprising cultural shift came in the form of both new religious awakenings, and the…