Reconstruction Period Question?

Question

How do you think Reconstruction could have been made more effective in rebuilding the South and ensuring the rights of freed slaves?"

Answer 1

Unfortunately neither cause was an objective of the US government. For a while, retribution was the only real aim. Lincoln was formulating policies which Johnson carried on after he was assasinated. The policy was far more lenient than the Radical Reconstruction which followed it. We can only theorize how this might have improved the situation of the freed slaves, but it was certainly better for everyone else in the South.

Few in the North were truly interested in the plight of the freed slaves once they were free, except that they didn't want them coming North. Many states passed laws making it illegal for a former slave to take up residence there. They wanted the problem to remain in the South.

Radical Reconstruction was, for the most part, a debacle on all fronts. The once popular myth is that the South was swarmed by carpetbaggers who plundered the coffers of the states with the help of uneducated former slaves. Many revisionist historians are going to a lot of trouble to dispell that myth, but are unfornately just creating a new one to replace the old one. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

There were good and bad among the Northerners who came South, the Southern land-owners, and the former slaves. There were quite a few Southerners who participated zealously in the graft and corruption, and there were Northerners who tried to stop it. There were freed slaves who had managed, against odds, to educate themselves, and had justice, rather than vengence, as a goal. In the end, more evil was done than good. A measure of the corruption is that it took nearly a century for South Carolina to pay off the worthless bonds floated during that era; the last was paid in 1952.

The Union League, as an example, was supposedly formed to help freed slaves, but was nothing but a propoganda tool of the Republican party. No one who served the Confederacy in an capacity could vote, which meant just about every male who wasn't a slave, and the Union League convinced almost all the freed slaves to vote Republican. This drove a wedge between Southern Whites and Blacks, and I believe this is the root of a lot of racial problems which exist here today.

It is not natural for people to lie down and allow everything to be taken from them without a fight, especially those who had been in power. White Southerners saw the Union League as perhaps the most insidious institution in their midst, and sought to extinguish it.

Of course, the Republicans convinced the freed slaves that this was the White man trying to re-enslave them. It was during this time that the Ku Klux Klan, Order of the White Camelia, and other such organizations came to life, and violence flourished.

In the North, the memory of the War had already begun to grow distant. Very little of it happened up there, and they were moving on. The violence, however, brought their attention back to the problem, and they began to criticize Radical Reconstruction policies. However, once President Grant subdued the Klan and their ilk, the North chose once again to ignore the situation.

The political deal that was struck behind closed doors which gave power back to White Southerners can be viewed as the North attempting to wash their hands of the mess once and for all. And what they left behind was ill-will and ruin.

The Whites, especially those who had been robbed of their lands during reconstruction, viewed the former slaves as allies of their enemies, the carpetbaggers. When US Occupation forces were removed from the states, those ex-slaves were left with no protection whatsoever, except that of some of the moderate Whites, such as Wade Hampton. But Hampton couldn't heal the wounds that existed on both sides; no one could. And sadly, a less than moderate movement emerged which took over the South, and held it for many years.

Answer 2

if those in control of the reconstruction had not taken a hard attitude in getting revenge against the Southern States and had welcomed the States back with no or very little punishment then this might have created a less hostile atmosphere

Answer 3

It became the "Reconstruction" of the South after the Civil conflict. This reconstruction became no longer in reality actual, it became monetary, and political. save in recommendations, it became no longer a region that mandatory to be "fastened" from conflict harm. It became portion of our u . s . a . that had to be mended and made satisfied to be re-joined into union. It became a huge feat, re-connect a divided u . s . a . that had sought to confirm the destruction of the different. you could ought to seem for the specifics, as there are quite some information to tug you information from. besides the undeniable fact that, the technique - dividing the South into 5 military districts (military rule) and the demanding political situations that had to be met led to the topics that Lincoln and Johnson had tried to stay away from.