Reconstruction: The Period That Occurred Following The Civil War
The Reconstruction was the period that occurred following the Civil War, when "the states of the breakaway Confederacy were reintegrated into the United States of America" ("Reconstruction"). The North was not terribly successful at changing Southern society during the Reconstruction. Although the slaves were technically freed, the South insisted on strict segregation, and by the
end of the Reconstruction period black people were relegated to a second-class citizen status that ended most of their civil, political, and economic rights and that persisted until the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century ("Reconstruction"). The redeemers were able to take back the South because blacks did not have the right to vote in most Southern states, so few blacks voted in elections, and the whites who voted were mainly racists. The majority of Northerners were not really dedicated to reconstructing Southern society. They were more concerned with the profitability of their own enterprises, and the abolition of slavery was the primary thing that accomplished that for them. Furthermore, rampant racism manifested in many forms, such as the vigilante organization, the Ku Klux Klan ("Reconstruction"). Once slavery was abolished, the South no longer had the "free" labor that enabled them to produce goods so much more cheaply than the North. This indicates that freeing the slaves did nothing to remedy the underlying racism behind it; it merely meant that rather than being guaranteed the support of their owners, slaves were now forced to subsist on their own in a society where they had no rights or privileges.
Common topics in this essay:
Klan Reconstruction,
Reconstruction North,
Reconstruction Furthermore,
Civil War,
,
southern society,
reconstruction period,
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