1. Topic: Analyzing The Impact of Reconstruction: Success or Failure?
Do Now: “Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people were not ended. Though they were not slaves, they were not yet quite free… The Negro after Emancipation was free from the individual master, but he remained the slave of society.
Fredrick Douglass, 1882
Interpret the meaning of this quotation

2. Reconstruction and the North
1870s: North growing tired of Reconstruction:
Expensive ($$, manpower)
Taking too long
South too stubborn
Political divisiveness
Why help blacks?
Government Corruption at all levels (graft, bribery)
North preoccupied with its own issues (industrialization, etc.)
1877: Reconstruction ends

3. The Ku Klux Klan Ku Klux Klan (1866)
The “Invisible Empire” Founded by ex confederate soldiers (General N. Forrest)
Scare tactics to intimidate freedmen and their allies
“ghosts”, burnings, beatings, lynching
Prevent freedmen from exercising their rights
Stops voting (Georgia 1868 incident)
Congress tries to stop Klan w/ Force Act 1870
However, Klan succeeds in intimidation

4. The “Redeemer Governments”
1870s: As Union troops pull out of South, new local southern governments elected
Blacks voted out
Democrats repeal many Reconstruction reforms
The “Young Southern Democrat”
Limits on Freedmen political rights
Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, etc.
All legal

5. The “New South” Emerges
The “Solid South” for Democrats (Republicans powerless there for decades)
Southern resentments continue
However, secession is never an option again
South begins to industrialize (never as much as the North)
Creation of a new “social order”
Segregation law of the land
Plessey v. Ferguson (1896)
“separate but equal”
Jim Crow Laws

6. Conclusion
In your assessment, was Reconstruction a success or failure? On what do you base this answer?