In what specific ways did white southerners manage to "win the peace,"?

Question

fighting on after the Civil War to prevent major changes to southern society?

Answer 1

One way they "won the peace" was stopping Reconstruction and setting up Jim Crow laws. This way they assured their way of life. They forced the blacks down and forced the Yankees out of the South. The Democratic Party grew and this forced the Republicans pretty much out of the South. It helped them set the laws in their favor. It also helped to have bad Presidents during this time period who would not stand up to them.

Answer 2

The South was able to defeat Reconstruction by a corrupt bargain with the Republican Party in the Presidential election of 1876. The election was thrown into chaos when several Southern states reported two sets of election results. Rutherford B. Hayes, in return for getting all the disputed votes and winning the Presidency by one electoral vote, agreed to end Rocnstruction. This put paid to any advancement by African-Americans in the South.
Then, bolstered by the surprise result of the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson (which legalized segregation), white Southerners were able to maintain something pretty much the same as slavery for a hundred years after the Civil War.

Answer 3

Southern whites tended to bring in new regimes in the South which were suspiciously like those of the antebellum period. Although slavery was abolished, each reconstructed Southern state government proceeded to adopt a "Black Code," regulating the rights and privileges of freedmen. Varying from state to state, these codes in general treated blacks as inferiors, relegated to a secondary and subordinate position in society. Their right to own land was restricted, they could not bear arms, and they might be bound out in servitude for vagrancy and other offenses. The conduct of white Southerners indicated that they were not prepared to guarantee even minimal protection of ***** rights. In riots in Memphis (May 1866) and New Orleans (July 1866), black persons were brutally assaulted and killed.