Group+Four

Group Four: Schade, Searle, Zhang

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The North and South approached Reconstruction with very different aims. Northerners agreed with each other on issues such as keeping Republicans in charge and protecting the rights of freedmen, but disagreed on the process of readmitting Southern states. The Southerners sought freedom through resisting interference from the Northern and federal governments and striving to preserve local autonomy and white supremacy. Through improving the economy and retaining the social and political dynamic of the antebellum era, the “New South” fulfilled the white southerners’ definition of freedom and became a foil for Northern goals for Reconstruction.======

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The new more diverse economy of the New South consolidated the gains by white Southerners and kept post war society stratified. Many Southerners believed that they had lost the Civil War because the southern economy was not able to compete with the modern industrialized north. Advocates of Southern industrialization such as Henry Grady proclaimed the South had to “out-Yankee the Yankees”. They promoted the ideals of thrift, industry and progress. After the civil war, textile mills began materializing in the South. Mills were attractive due large amounts of waterpower, cheap labor, low taxes, and non-interventionist Southern governments. The American Tobacco Company headed by James B. Duke increased the prominence of the tobacco processing industry in the South. In places such as Birmingham and other areas of the lower South, the steel industry developed quite rapidly; in 1890 the South manufactured nearly one-fifth of all iron and steel produced in the United States, Between 1880 and 1890, railroad track in the South more than doubled. In 1886, the South adopted the track gauge of the North, thereby integrating their transportation systems with the rest of the country. The growth of this industry required a substantial workforce. In Southern factories, many workers were women due to high male casualties during the civil war. If African Americans were offered jobs, they were the most menial and lowest paying available. The South was able to compete with the North economically and exclude freedmen from the benefits of growth. As the plantation system collapsed, sharecropping, tenant farming and the Crop Lien system filled the gap. They recreated the limitations of slavery for small farmers. Farmers, having offered a lien of their crops as collateral, often did not grow enough to pay the storeowners and were stuck in spiraling cycles of debt. Sharecroppers had to use the small amount they had left for food and living necessities since they were forced to grow cash crops to pay their debts. It was arguably inferior to the plantation system, under which they were provided with these necessities. The new agriculture systems of the postwar South held people in quasi slavery. These economic changes improved the standard of living and preserved the supremacy of the Bourbon rule, thus retaining the elements of the stratified antebellum South.======

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Despite Northern intervention, white southerners maintained the social structure of the Old South through the political implementation of the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws and the respective social and economic successes of the Klu Klux Klan and Crop-Lien system. The Black Codes and Jim Crow laws were significant in preserving a society that resembled the antebellum South. In 1865 and early 1866 southern state legislatures enacted the Black Codes, a series of laws that offered whites substantial control over their former slaves. They authorized local officials to apprehend and fine unemployed blacks by hiring them out to private employers. Moreover, by forbidding blacks to own or lease farms or to take any jobs other than as plantation workers or domestic servants, the Codes essentially put double jeopardy on African-Americans in search of an income. Although Northern response to the Black Codes, the first Civil Rights Act and Fourteenth Amendment, was effective in weakening power of the Codes, these Codes still helped assert white superiority and served as a precursor for the Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were designed to evade the goals of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments and served as a means for whites to institutionalize an elaborate system of segregation and retain control of social relations. Firmly established by the opening of the twentieth century, they were a reaction to the increasing difficulty of maintaining traditional patterns of deference and subjugation. A component of the Jim Crow laws restricted the franchise through a poll tax and literacy test that undermined the Fifteenth amendment. The Supreme Court complied with white southern demands, validating the literacy test and encouraging segregation through cases such as Plessy v Ferguson. The Black Codes and Jim Crow laws were effective in undermining the efforts of Northern Republicans and goals of the freedmen. The remarkable success of the Klu Klux Klan strengthened support toward the notion of white racial superiority and encouraged further acts of black subordination. Founded in 1866 by former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan was established in a region where blacks were a majority and intimidation and violence were the most effective methods to prevent free African Americans from exercising the rights supposedly secured by Reconstruction governments. The secret society absorbed many smaller terrorist organizations and served as a military force in the battle against Northern rule. The strength of its rituals, costumes and secret languages inspired terror amongst black communities while encouraging pride and patriotism in whites. Beyond discouraging black political power, the influence of the Klan increased economic pressure; some planters refused to rent land to Republican blacks and storekeepers refused to extend them credit, reducing or completely eliminating economic opportunities for Freedmen. Moreover, the public violence and lynching in the 1890s took their cue from the Klu Klux Klan as a mean to control the black population through terror and intimidation. Despite the effective Enforcement Acts passed in the early 1870s that restricted the Klan’s violence, its destructive seeds of influence were already sown. The Crop-Lien system trapped black farmers in an inescapable cycle of debt. Despite significant economic progress for African Americans since the antebellum era, land and income redistribution were offset by the reliance on credit. Soil exhaustion and low cotton prices could cause a few bad years for black farmers, tying them down indeterminately to the white merchant, thus mimicking the black dependence on white landowners characteristic of slavery. The crop-lien system was successful in achieving the white goal of maintaining white supremacy. It served as a loophole to the laws and amendments that had given economic and social power to the freedmen. The Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, the influence of the Klu Klux Klan and the debilitating Crop-Lien system effectively preserved the pre-war social structure and the supremacy of the oligarchic Bourbon Rule.======

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Although the initial influence and dedication of Reconstruction governments to implementing change in the Southern states was potent, by the end of the dreary “tug of war” between North and South, Southern Democrats were able to regain local autonomy and banish Freedmen and Republicans from holding office in Southern governments. White southerners entered Reconstruction in hopes of regaining control of their own destinies without intervention from the North and the federal government. The Northern moderates’ goal for Reconstruction was rapid reunification of the Union with little concern of promising rights to Freedmen or punishing Confederate leaders. Lincoln created the 10% plan, which allowed each Southern state to set up a government after 10% of its population agreed to end slavery and rejoin the Union. Radicals approached the 10% plan with strong opposition; they wanted readmission of the South to be as difficult as possible in order to keep Republicans in power and to secure the rights of Freedmen. The constant disagreement within the Northern government weakened their aims for a successful and speedy Reconstruction process. After the espousal of the Civil War Amendments and especially the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on “race, color, and previous condition of servitude,” many Northern reformers, assured that Freedmen were now capable of supporting themselves, were beginning to reduce their level of commitment to Reconstruction. In addition to this belief which lowered Northern advocating of blacks’ rights, the Panic of 1873 and concept of “Social Darwinism” provided Northerners with a rationale for societal poverty and instability. The Panic of 1873 forced state and local governments to reduce the amount of funds they were spending on Reconstruction and curtail social services, education, and land distribution for Freedmen. “Social Darwinism” argues that certain individuals, due to their own flaws and detriments, will struggle to adapt to society’s harsh expectations and remain misfits. With this principle, Northerners were further convinced that government intervention in the South would prove ineffective due to natural and inevitable reasons. In effect, the discontinuation of the Freedmen’s Bureau on July 1, 1869, halted the fight, once and for all, for black equality in a society that increasingly advocated white supremacy. As a result of heavy corruption in the Reconstruction governments, Northern Republicans’ decline in commitment to Reconstruction and the Radicals shift to cooperation with Democrats, white Southern Democrats slowly started to reestablish their power and restore local autonomy. In 1876, only South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida remained “unredeemed;” the other Confederate states had liberated themselves from Republican control. By the Compromise of 1877, in which newly elected Republican president Hayes promised the withdrawal of federal troops in the South and Confederate leaders were guaranteed office positions in Congress and the president’s cabinet, Reconstruction had come to an end. Every southern state had been “redeemed” and Northern and federal government intervention was over. Through Redemption, the new “solid South” back lashed against the highly involved Reconstruction governments, allowing white Southern Democrats to retake control of state governments. Blacks and Republicans who had previously involved with the government were now kicked out of office. In the end, the South won Reconstruction with their return to the antebellum era political state of affairs.======

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The wealthy elite was able to regain control after the last withdrawl of Northern troops and recreate the social dynamics that had existed under slavery. The implementation of legislature that included the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, the widespread influence of the Klu Klux Klan and the subordination of freedmen incurred by the Crop-Lien system were the major factors behind their victory. The growth of textile and tobacco mills, steel production and railroad expansion helped the South make their economy more competitive. Sharecropping and the spread of the Crop-Lien system kept freedmen reliant on Southern whites. The South, up against the increasingly divided and apathetic North, won the battle of Reconstruction. The white southerners re-attained the social and political structures that had been important to them while slavery existed and managed to strengthen and diversify their economy. Divisions and corruption in the North allowed the South to successfully reclaim a solely Democratic government concentrated with the wealthy elite.======