Title: Failure of Reconstruction

Successes of the Reconstruction: New state constitutions allowed all Southern men to vote Replaced many appointed government positions with elected positions Stimulated industrial and rail development in the South through loans, grants, and tax exemptions New Southern governments directed mostly by transplanted Northern Republicans, African Americans, and Southern moderates created public schools and orphanages

However, Reconstruction ultimately failed. State governments were seen as ineffective. There was widespread poverty and lack of land reform for African Americans. Many who participated in Reconstruction were corrupt, selling their votes for money and favors. Although government industrialization plans helped rebuild the Southern economy, these plans cost a lot of money. –High tax rates turned public opinion, already antagonistic to Reconstruction, even more hostile.

Believing that giving away planters’ land to former slaves was too extreme, Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act. This law set aside 45 million acres of government-owned land to provide free farms. The failure of Congress to provide 40 acres and a mule resulted in a new economic dependency on their former masters The sharecropping system developed –The employer provided the land, tools, seed—basically everything but the labor. If able, some switched to tenant farming, renting the land they farmed from the landowner. Land ownership usually consolidated into huge holdings and concentrated on one cash crop, usually cotton African American signed work contracts with white landowners to toil under the lash, as if slavery still existed

13 year old boy sharecropping

Opponents waged a propaganda war against Reconstruction: Southerners who cooperated were called scalawags –Many were farmers who never owned slaves Northerners who ran the programs carpetbaggers –The name came from the suitcases they carried, implying they had come to the South merely to stuff their bags with will-gotten wealth

Accompanying the propaganda war was a war of intimidation, spearheaded by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan targeted those who supported Reconstruction; it attacked and often murdered scalawags, black and white Republican leaders, community activists, and teachers The Klan successfully intimidated many of its opponents, preventing a more complete implementation of Reconstruction

Because Reconstruction did nothing to redistribute the South’s wealth or guarantee that the freedmen would own property, it did very little to alter the basic power structure of the region Southerners knew that when the Northerners left things would return to a condition much closer to the way they were before Reconstruction The New South was becoming industrial, but in many ways it remained the same. White southerners deeply resented that the federal government controlled their states.

Worse, throughout the 1860s and 1870s, the Supreme Court consistently restricted the scope of the 14 th and 15 th Amendments In United States v. Reese, the court legalized “grandfather clauses,” poll taxes, property requirements, and other restrictions on voting privileges –Soon nearly all Southern states had restrictive laws that effectively prevented African Americans from voting In the Slaughter-House case, the court ruled that the 14 th Amendment applied only to the federal government, not to state governments, an opinion the court strengthened in United States v. Cruikshank

Finally, because Grant’s administration was so thoroughly corrupt, it tainted everything with which it was associated, including Reconstruction

During the 1872 election, moderates calling themselves Liberal Republicans abandoned the coalition that supported Reconstruction. Angered by widespread corruption, this group hoped to end federal control of the South Although their candidate, Horace Greeley, did not defeat Grant, they made gains in congressional and state elections.

Several congressional acts, among them the Amnesty Act of 1872, pardoned many of the rebels, thus allowing them to reenter public life Other crises, such as the financial Panic of 1873, drew the nation’s attention away from Reconstruction By 1876, Southern Democrats regained control of most of the region’s state legislatures.

The election of 1876 was extremely close, with the vote in several states contested on charges of fraud The election demonstrated the split between the North & South With the Compromise of 1877, Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops in the South, and in return, Rutherford B. Hayes became president

For a century after Reconstruction ended, the South was known as the Solid South, always voting Democratic. It was not until the 1970s that the Republican Party was able to gain ground in the South.