i cannot recall the president's name, but i have a question about the pres. who declared Reconstruction done?

Question

the president who declared that Reconstruction was complete, even though many states were far from recovered, was that annoucement at all comperable to Pres. Bush's premature decleration of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq?why/why not?

Answer 1

Rutherford B. Hayes

No, with the disputed election of 1876 , a deal was made so Hayes received the 20 electoral votes necessary for him to win the election despite the fact that Tilden appeared to have won.One of those deals was that Hayes would end Reconstruction once entering office. He did so in 1877 in his first year in office.

Answer 2

Johnson may have declared Reconstruction to be over, but it did not actually end until the Compromise of 1877. In the compromise, it stated that Hayes would become president(his election was disputed since 20 electoral votes were up for grabs after the election), if Reconstruction in the South would officially end. With the 20 electoral votes going Hayes way, he became the one point winner over Tilden, and the military rule over the South ended, and so did reconstruction.

Answer 3

Reconstruction was the attempts from 1865 to 1877 in U.S. history to resolve the issues of the American Civil War, when both the Confederacy and slavery were destroyed. Reconstruction addressed the return of the Southern states that had seceded, the status of ex-Confederate leaders, and the Constitutional and legal status of the African-American Freedmen. Violent controversy arose over how to accomplish those tasks, and by the late 1870s Reconstruction had failed to equally integrate the Freedmen into the legal, political, economic and social system. "Reconstruction" is also the common name for the entire history of the era 1865 to 1877.

Reconstruction came in three phases. Presidential Reconstruction 1863-66 was controlled by Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, with the goal of quickly reuniting the country. Their moderate programs were opposed by the Radical Republicans, a political faction that gained power after the 1866 elections and began Radical Reconstruction, 1866-1873 emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for the Freedmen. A Republican coalition of Freedmen, Carpetbaggers and Scalawags controlled most of the southern states. In the so-called Redemption, 1873-77, white supremacist Southerners (calling themselves "Redeemers") defeated the Republicans and took control of each southern state, marking the end of Reconstruction.

Radical Republican Charles Sumner argued that secession had destroyed statehood alone but the Constitution still extended its authority and its protection over individuals, as in the territories. Thaddeus Stevens and his followers viewed secession as having left the states in a status like newly conquered territory.

Congress rejected Johnson's argument that he had the war power to decide what to do, since the war was now over. Congress decided it had the primary authority to decide because the Constitution said the Congress had to guarantee each state a republican form of government; the issue became how republicanism should operate in the South.

Answer 4

although reconstruction did not really end with him in 1877, Andrew Johnson declared it over in a speech before the congress in August of 1877

Answer 5

Whoever was President during 1877 (I forgot who it was) but you can go look on the web for US History or HistoryChannel.com

Answer 6

This is a tricky question, because in fact, it's not all that clear that any President made this sort of "premature announcement" in EITHER case.

I'll take them one at a time:

BUSH ?

Actually, Bush never said "mission accomplished" -- though he did, in that speech, announce the end of "major combat operations", that is, that the specific mission of taking down Sadam Hussein had been accomplished.

He started the speech this way:
"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."

But the terms used aren't exactly the point... it's what he was REFERRING to that counts. And what many people have not heard, or have not remembered the REST of the speech, in which he very clearly said that the effort in Iraq was NOT finished (as mentioned in the second sentence above). Note this:

"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. . . . The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. And then we will leave — and we will leave behind a free Iraq."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/01/iraq/main551946.shtml

So it's impossible to compare what President Johnson (or Hayes, if that's who you meant) to Bush's remarks, since Bush did NOT say what people keep claiming he said! (Disagree and criticize what he's done, but please do read the speech above and make sure you know what he actually did say.)

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JOHNSON ?

On the other part of your question -- I'm not 100% sure which event you're referring to, but most likely it was an announcement by President Johnson in 1865, well before the end of what we now call "Reconstruction". But, in context, he wasn't necessarily mistaken.

To understand this it's important, first, to note what that word MEANS. It does NOT refer to the resolution of all problems in the South, much less the rebuilding efforts. It refers specifically to restoring the seceded states to their full rights within the national government. The confusion comes about partly because different groups had different notions of how this should be done, and tried to carry them out.

The first was a "Presidential Reconstruction" program. In May 1865, after the Civil War ended (and after Lincoln's assassination) President Andrew Johnson began to carry out his own plan of reconstruction. During that time --while Congress was out of session-- Johnson called on the Southern states to accept the 13th amendment (that is, the end of slavery), to renounce their acts of secession and the Confederate debt. They really did not need to do much more. Many were required to seek pardon from the President to be allowed to hold office. . .but he granted that quite freely to nearly all.

In December Johnson announced that the nation was "restored", that is, that the reconstruction plan to restore these states to the Union was essentially finished. In one sense reconstruction -- however flawed-- it WAS. The only reason that suddenly changed, was that the Republican Congress did not like what Johnson had done and set out to fix it. They were especially upset that Southern states sent Confederate secessionist leaders to Congress, and had passed "black codes" whose limitations on the freed blacks was little different from slavery. So Congress put together their OWN reconstruction plan (which Johnson opposed, but they were in time able to override his vetoes), which lasted several more years.

definition of Reconstruction
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reconstruction

timeline including "Presidential" Reconstruction
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=126

Details of Johnson's plan
http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/departments/isa/ninvest/reconstruction/johnsonsplan.htm
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2533

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HAYES?

Now perhaps you meant statements about Hayes when he became President in 1877? At that point the Congressional Reconstruction Plan --what little was left of it -- DID come to an end. Hayes is often blamed for this, on the claim that he sold out free blacks to make a deal to secure the disputed election. But in fact the evidence of some great "Compromise" is questionable. Grant had already removed almost all troops when he lost political support for keeping them there, esp. after a concerted campaign of whites in Mississippi in 1875, which spread to other states in 1876 It was already very clear before Hayes's election that he would have to remove the few left. (The "Compromise" theory is based partly on the fact that Northern Republicans had begun, months before, to work with certain Southerners who shared common interests with them, concerning the railroads, for instance. )

Actually, it is worth looking at Hayes's inaugural address in which he DOES discuss the 'unfinished business' in the South and urges them (esp. their white leaders) to co-operate, to uphold the Constitutional rights of blacks, etc. And he was hopeful that, though he could not enforce it militarily, Southern white leaders would keep their promises to do so. Unfortunately, they did not. (Hayes also worked hard, during his Presidency, to expand education to poor blacks, though he failed to get support for that.)

For Hayes's inaugural see the following (esp. paragraphs 4-10)
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres35.html

Now, if you're referring to what Reconstruction SHOULD have accomplished, esp. in terms of establishing the rights of freed blacks... well after some initial successes in the 1870s that, sadly, did not make much headway again until after World War II.