Group+Two+A

Group Two A: Cuic, DiMichele, Herr, Tang

INTRO: The main goals of the South during the Reconstruction period were to impede northern progress and ultimately keep southern life the way it was before the war. At first, it seemed that the North was accomplishing many of its goals: passing laws against the south, abolishing slavery, and allowing suffrage for the freed blacks. With complete control of Congress the North was on the path to national domination. However, once the North’s resources were exhausted and it pulled out of reconstruction, the South began to revert back to its antebellum existence. Economically, its agrarian system of a one-crop plantation recovered with blacks as the main work force. Social classes stayed the same with whites on top of the caste system. Politically, all southern governments returned to the control of the Democratic Party by the end of Reconstruction. The southern goals of Reconstruction centered around maintaining the antebellum way of life, and the South accomplished these goals by keeping the economy in its original form of a one crop system, which prevented any lasting social and political revolution and ultimately gave white southerners what they wanted: a breakdown of the Reconstruction movement. 

Northern futuristic views directly clashed with traditional Southern values in the post-war economy of the South. Even though the North tried to implement its reconstruction policies in all parts of the southern economy, the South gradually regained its ‘Lost Cause’ and created a purely one crop economic system - both direct opposites of what North hoped to achieve. The North hoped to transform the South by creating a capitalistic and industrial economy. Following Reconstruction, the North tried to provide incentive for more workers to strive for greater economic well-being, which would in turn foster a purely capitalistic economy. Therefore, northern policies encouraged freedom and the education of Freedmen, which would not only expand competition among laborers, but also make Freedmen more aware of their economic rights. The general concern about Reconstruction in the North was evident through Freedmen’s Bureau and other philanthropic movements that followed those principles. The progress was not only wide-spread, but was highly important to many northerners. They saw the South as the new frontier of opportunities, and entrusted their future there (for example, carpetbaggers). However, Southerners were dedicated to restoring the system they had before the war and relied heavily on tradition and custom when gradually overturning all northern policies in their favor. Even though industry began to develop slowly, the South was still very much dependent on agriculture. The crop-lien system and factor system allowed influential white landowners to preserve overwhelming control over blacks by holding them in debt with the expenses of free life (food, clothing, and bare necessities) and providing them with subordinate jobs to repay the debts. While agriculture was being re-established as the basis of southern white life, the arduous work on plantations was being re-established as a basis of southern black life. At the same time the benefits that the Freedmen’s Bureau and other reconstruction programs were supposed to bring to Southern life merely prompted further segregation. The difference from the antebellum era was that now racial divisions did not only rest on tradition, but also on legal support, which was proven by //Plessy v. Ferguson //. At the end of Reconstruction, southern life took place on highly specialized, one-crop plantations where blacks worked endlessly for the whites. Even though they continued to live in the same territory, their lives were evolving into two different, divided worlds. The South managed to bring the ‘Lost Cause’ back at the expense of Northern effort.

The social revolution that was supposed to take place during Reconstruction ultimately never came to fruition. As the southern states were slowly readmitted to the Union, they were required by Congress to ratify the 14th and later the 15th amendments in order to become states again. Congress was taking significant steps towards giving blacks some measure of social equality in society with the civil war amendments and the first civil rights act. While the intentions of Congress and the northern radicals may have been pure, the execution of their plans was flawed, as they basically disappeared and left the South to its own devices after they passed the 15th amendment guaranteeing blacks the vote. After the passing of the civil war amendments and the North pulling out of the South, the pattern towards oppression of and violence towards blacks began again in earnest. The Ku Klux Klan was founded and with that came a tidal wave of violence towards blacks. At the same time the Supreme Court ruled in support of segregation in //Plessy v. Ferguson, // which dealt a further a blow on the social rights of blacks. A mere 25 years after the civil war ended, blacks in the South were in some ways worse off than before the war. They were legally citizens, but they were treated as second class and constantly threatened by the KKK, whose aim was to keep blacks in their 'place,' or more specifically, to maintain white supremacy by any means necessary. Clearly, by the mid 1890's, the South had gotten exactly what they wanted out of Reconstruction: a South that was as close to a replica of the antebellum version as it could be.

The Reconstruction movement began with northern efforts to keep the Republican Party in power and enforce the abolition of slavery. These goals were reflected in the politics of the Reconstruction movement, but the South ultimately undid the efforts of the North during the Redemption era. After Andrew Johnson became president, Congress essentially took control of the Reconstruction movement. During this time, northern opinions toward the South became increasingly radical as the South refused to accept the abolition of slavery, even though it was officially abolished in the 13th Amendment. The South attempted to reverse the effects of this amendment by passing the Black Codes: a set of laws passed by state legislatures that would maintain the legal status of blacks and white supremacy. Congress reacted by passing the Civil Rights Act, stating that blacks were legally citizens. The 14th and 15th Amendments also defined citizenship to include blacks and gave the vote to all male citizens, thus allowing black suffrage. Then Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, which divided the South into five military districts. Readmission required that states ratify a new constitution that allowed black suffrage, and new state legislatures had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The states readmitted under this plan were dominated by Republicans, with mainly blacks, “scalawags,” and “carpetbaggers” in power. However, with the Panic of 1873, northern support of Reconstruction began to dwindle. The North was running out of funds for social services that aided former slaves, and many began to doubt the value of this aid with the emergence of Social Darwinism. “Those influenced by Social Darwinism came to view the large number of unemployed vagrants in the North – and poor blacks in the South – as irredeemable misfits” (Brinkley, 417). The Democrats eventually became a majority in the House of Representatives. In the Compromise of 1877, Republicans agreed to withdraw troops from the South and made many other provisions that aided the South. President Hayes allowed Democrats to stay in power, thus marking the end of the Reconstruction movement and the beginning of the Redemption era. During this time, white Southerners made efforts to regain white supremacy. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments were undone by civil rights cases that legalized segregation in private organizations. In //Plessy v. Ferguson //, segregation was further legalized through a ruling that allowed for separate spaces for blacks and whites as long as they were equal. To prevent blacks from voting, Southern legislatures passed poll taxes, property qualifications, and literacy/understanding tests. The Supreme Court validated the literacy test and generally allowed Southern states to avoid the Fifteenth Amendment by administering the tests unequally. Laws like these eventually became a large group of statutes called Jim Crow laws that spread segregation throughout the South and took away any of the progress former slaves had made during the Reconstruction movement and maintained the antebellum culture between the races.

Through the use of economic, social, and political domination, the South ultimately reestablished a new version of the antebellum South. Although the northern Radicals did all that was in their power to reconstruct the South they ultimately made no significant changes to the area and its society. Once more, the South demonstrated that its economy fueled all other facets of southern life. This showed that although the North may have won the military battle, the South won the war.