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Motive 1: Racist attitudesBlack codesThe laws codified white supremacy by restricting the civic participation of freed people; the codes deprived them of the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to own or carry weapons, and, in some cases, even the right to rent or lease land. Slavery had been a pillar of economic stability in the region before the war; now, black codes ensured the same stability by recreating the antebellum economic structure under the fa?ade of a free-labour system. Adhering to new “apprenticeship” laws determined within the black codes, judges bound many young African American orphans to white plantation owners who would then force them to work. Adult freedmen were forced to sign contracts with their employers—who were oftentimes their previous owners. These contracts prevented African Americans from working for more than one employer, and therefore, from positively influencing the very low wages or poor working conditions they received. Any former slaves that attempted to violate or evade these contracts were fined, beaten, or arrested for vagrancy. Upon arrest, many “free” African Americans were made to work for no wages, essentially being reduced to the very definition of a slave. Although slavery had been outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, it effectively continued in many southern states.Voting clausesJim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Many of these laws were focused on legally disfranchising the freedmen, especially with regard to voting, thereby blocking their participation in political life. Blacks were still elected to local offices in the 1880s, but the establishment Democrats were passing laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive. As a result, political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote. Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked. ViolenceRacial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms: urban riots, interpersonal fights, and organized vigilante groups. There were riots in southern cities several times during Reconstruction. The most notable were the riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866, but other large-scale urban conflicts erupted in places including Laurens, South Carolina in 1870; Colfax, Louisiana in 1873; another in New Orleans in 1874; Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1875; and Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876. Southern cities grew rapidly after the war as migrants from the countryside—particularly freed slaves—flocked to urban centres. Cities became centres of Republican control. But white conservatives chafed at the influx of black residents and the establishment of biracial politics. In nearly every conflict, white conservatives initiated violence in reaction to Republican rallies or conventions or elections in which black men were to vote. The death tolls of these conflicts remain incalculable—and victims were overwhelmingly black.The Ku Klux Klan was organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee and had spread to nearly every state of the former Confederacy by 1868. The Klan drew heavily from the antebellum southern elite, but Klan groups sometimes overlapped with criminal gangs or former Confederate guerrilla groups. The Klan’s imagery of white hoods and robes became so potent, and its violence so widespread, that many groups not formally associated with it were called Ku Kluxers, and to “Ku Klux” was used to mean to commit vigilante violence. While it is difficult to differentiate Klan actions from those of similar groups, such as the White Line, Knights of the White Camellia, and the White Brotherhood, the distinctions hardly matter. All such groups were part of a web of terror that spread throughout the South during Reconstruction. In Panola County, Mississippi, between August 1870 and December 1872, twenty-four Klan-style murders occurred. And nearby, in Lafayette County, Klansmen drowned thirty blacks in a single mass murder. Sometimes the violence was aimed at “uppity” blacks who had tried to buy land or dared to be insolent toward a white. Other times, as with the beating of Republican sheriff and tax collector Allen Huggins, the Klan targeted white politicians who supported freed people’s civil rights. Numerous, perhaps dozens, of Republican politicians were killed, either while in office or while campaigning. Thousands of individual citizens, men and women, white and black, had their homes raided and were whipped, raped, or murdered.Need for enforcement acts and military interventionThe federal government responded to southern paramilitary tactics by passing the Enforcement Acts between 1870 and 1871. The acts made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights. The acts also deemed violent Klan behaviour as acts of rebellion against the United States and allowed for the use of U.S. troops to protect freed people. For a time, the federal government, its courts, and its troops, sought to put an end to the KKK and related groups. But the violence continued. By 1876, as southern Democrats re-established “home rule” and “redeemed” the South from Republican rule, federal opposition to the KKK weakened. National attention shifted away from the South and the activities of the Klan, but African Americans remained trapped in a world of white supremacy that restricted their economic, social, and political rights.Motive 2: Economic problems1873 depression and impact on the south.The Panic of 1873, also referred to as the Long Depression, was a financial crisis that triggered a depression that lasted for six years and led to economic hardships, civil unrest, protests, demonstrations and the first nationwide strikes.Some of the consequences of the 1873 depression were:There were runs on state banks, bank closures, foreclosures and bankruptcies. Banks demanded payment of debts by manufacturers and industrialists. Railroad construction was greatly reduced, factories were closed, businesses were ruined and unemployment soared. There were an alarming number of foreclosures and bankruptcies. The prices of manufactured products plunged, inflation rose, the money supply dried up and credit was not available. Thousands of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. The destitute depended on charities to enable them to survive.100 railroad companies suffered immediate bankruptcy and many thousands of railroad workers lost their jobs. Over 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875 Nearly 1 in 8 Americans became unemployed. Building work stopped, the value of land dropped and profits crashedThe employers that were still in business cut wages. Average wages fell by nearly 25.Workers went on strike because of the pay cuts - refer to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877There was civil unrest, demonstrations, protests and violent riots across many of the cities in the United States.Federal troops were redeployed closer to the nation's industrial centre and far from Southern blacks in 1877. North no longer want to supportNorthern Republicans, who hoped to transform the South and the status of freedman through market reforms, were blamed for the economic downturn. As noted in Holt, Rinehart, and Winston's United States History: Beginnings to 1877, the crisis also meant that "Northerners were becoming less concerned about southern racism and more concerned with their financial well-being. Mid-term election 1874Poor economic conditions caused voters to turn against the Republican Party. In the 1874 congressional elections, the Democrats assumed control of the House. Public opinion made it difficult for the Grant administration to develop a coherent policy regarding the Southern states. The North began to steer away from Reconstruction. With the depression, ambitious railroad building programs crashed across the South, leaving most states deep in debt and burdened with heavy taxes. Retrenchment was a common response of southern states to state debts during the depression. One by one, each Southern state fell to the Democrats, and the Republicans lost power.Motive 3: Response to corruptionCarpetbaggersTogether with Republicans, carpetbaggers were viewed as politically manipulating formerly Confederate states for their own financial and political gains. Carpetbaggers were seen as insidious Northern outsiders with questionable objectives, who attempted to meddle with, and control, Southern politics. In fact, carpetbaggers became a powerful political force during Reconstruction. Sixty carpetbaggers were elected to Congress, and they included a majority of Republican governors in the South during Reconstruction.Many carpetbaggers moved to the South as social reformers. Beginning in 1862, Northern abolitionists moved to areas in the South that had fallen under Union control. Schoolteachers and religious missionaries arrived in the South, some sponsored by Northern churches. Some were abolitionists who sought to continue the struggle for racial equality; they often became agents of the federal Freedmen’s Bureau, which started operations in 1865 to assist the vast numbers of recently emancipated slaves. The bureau established schools in rural areas of the South for the purpose of educating the mostly illiterate black population. Other Northerners who moved to the South participated in rebuilding railroads that had been previously destroyed during the war.During the time blacks were enslaved, they were prohibited from being educated and attaining literacy. Southern states had no public school systems, and white Southerners either sent their children to private schools or employed private tutors. After the war, hundreds of Northern white women moved south, many to teach newly freed African-American children. While some Northerners went South with reformist impulses, many others went South merely to exploit the chaotic environment for personal gain.Many carpetbaggers were businessmen who purchased or leased plantations and became wealthy landowners, hiring freedmen to do the labour. Most were former Union soldiers eager to invest their savings in this promising new frontier, and civilians lured South by press reports of easy money on cotton plantations. Following the Civil War, carpetbaggers often bought plantations at fire-sale prices. Because of this and other behaviour, they were generally considered to be taking advantage of those living in the South. A carpetbagger should not be confused with a “copperhead,” a term given to Northerners who sympathized with the cause of Southern secession.ScalawagsIn U.S. history, “scalawag” was a term used for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party after the Civil War. Like “carpetbagger,” the term “scalawag” has a long history of use as a slur. Typically, it was used by conservative, pro-federation Southerners to derogate individuals whom they viewed as betraying Southern values by supporting Northern policies such as desegregation. In historical studies, the term is commonly used as a neutral descriptor for Southern white Republicans, but some historians have discontinued this habit because of the term’s pejorative origin.left9760100The cartoon shows a donkey labelled "KKK" walking away from a tree in which two men, one of whom is holding a bag labelled "Ohio," are lynched. The inscription at the top of the cartoon reads, "A prospective scene in the city of Oaks, 4th of March, 1869." The fate of the carpetbagger and scalawag: A cartoon threatening that the Ku Klux Klan would lynch carpetbaggers, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868During Reconstruction, scalawags formed coalitions with black freedmen and Northern newcomers to take control of state and local governments. Despite being a minority, these groups gained power by taking advantage of the Reconstruction laws of 1867. These laws disenfranchised individuals who could not take the Ironclad Oath. Any individual who had served in the Confederate Army, or who had held office in a state or Confederate government, was not allowed to take this oath. Because they were unable to take this oath, these individuals were disenfranchised. The coalition controlled every former Confederate state except Virginia, as well as Kentucky and Missouri (which were claimed by the North and the South) for varying lengths of time between 1866 and 1877. Two of the most prominent scalawags were General James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee’s top generals, and Joseph E. Brown, who had been the wartime governor of Georgia.Scalawags were denounced as corrupt by Democrats. The Democrats alleged that the scalawags were financially and politically corrupt, and willing to support bad government because they profited personally. Scalawags, along with carpetbaggers, were also targets of violence, mainly by the Ku Klux Klan. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Nathan Forrest, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, stated that the Klan’s primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments, people such as Tennessee governor William Gannaway Brownlow, and other “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags.” During the 1870s, many scalawags left the Republican Party and joined the conservative-Democrat coalitionCorruption and Grant’s administrationAfter his success as a General in the Union Army during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant was elected President of the United States in 1868. Grant upheld the Reconstruction policies set by Congress, which included maintaining federal troops in the South to protect the newly granted civil rights for blacks. But he was soon distracted by a series of scandals that plagued his administration. He may have been an exceptional military commander, but Grant had little experience making administrative policy decisions. He relies on his handlers to kind of create his cabinet, to set up his government, and a lot a ways to sort of dictate what will be the priorities of the administration. And many of these people put in place in his administration, his cabinet officials, turn out to be hopelessly corrupt.This corruption led to a number of scandals in the Grant administration. One involved a railroad company called Credit Mobilier, where, in 1872, stockholders cheated their own company out of millions of dollars. Among the stockholders were members of the United States Congress and Grant’s own Vice President, Schuyler Colfax. Another blow to the Grant administration occurred in 1873, when Jay Cooke & Company, one of the biggest financiers of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, declared bankruptcy. This created a ripple effect that caused many other businesses and financiers of the railroad to also go bankrupt. This financial panic led to a national depression. Outside of agriculture, the railroads were the largest employer in the United States. Millions of Americans lost their jobs.The depression was followed by another scandal known as the “Whiskey Ring.” In 1875, government officials, including Grant’s private secretary, Orville Babcock, filed false reports to cheat the government out of three million dollars in tax revenue on liquor. Although it was never proven that Grant himself was involved in any of these misdeeds, his administration suffered greatly in the eyes of the public.The scandals of the 1870s essentially weigh down Grant's administration and divert a lot of attention and energy, so that they lose a lot a political capital. They don't have the ability to maintain a vigorous Reconstruction policy. And that's key in understanding why the federal commitment to Reconstruction – it's one of many reasons why the federal commitment begins to wane in the 1870s.Motive 4: Idea of ‘home-rule’ (similar to state rights)Home-rule meant that the Republican Party would refrain from interfering in the South’s local affairs, and that white Democrats, many of them racist, would rule. Southern Democrats, for their part, pledged that they would “recognize the civil and political equality of blacks.” They did not subsequently carry through on this promise but instead disfranchised black men from voting and imposed Jim Crow segregation across the South.Open violence during electionsRed Shirt groups originated in Mississippi in 1875, when Democratic Party private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both whites and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.Among the most prominent Red Shirts were the supporters of Democratic Party candidate Wade Hampton during the campaigns for the South Carolina gubernatorial elections of 1876 and 1878. The Red Shirts were one of several paramilitary organizations, such as the White League in Louisiana, arising from the continuing efforts of white Democrats to regain political power in the South in the 1870s. These groups acted as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."While sometimes engaging in violent acts of terrorism, the Red Shirts, the White League, rifle clubs, and similar groups in the late nineteenth century worked openly and were better organized than the secret vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. They used organization, intimidation and force to achieve political purposes of restoring the Democrats to power, overturning Republicans, and repressing civil and voting rights of freedmen. During the 1876, 1898 and 1900 campaigns in North Carolina, the Red Shirts played prominent roles in intimidating non-Democratic Party voters.Motive 5: Determined to resist Northern military occupation.After the Civil War, a “foreign army” occupied the former Confederacy and imposed a new political order that most white southerners found abhorrent. The first Reconstruction Act of 1867 put most southern states under formal military control, supervised the writing of new state constitutions, and sought to enfranchise and empower former slaves. It also attempted to rebuild the south economically, but the reconstruction effort was undermined by corruption and poor administration. However creditable the aims may have been, the results were precisely what one would expect. Northern occupation eventually triggered violent resistance by the Ku Klux Klan, White League, Red Shirts, and other insurgent groups, which helped thwart Reconstruction and paved the way for the Jim Crow system that lasted until the second half of the 20th century.The profound sense of anger and resentment has also lasted many generations as can be seen by the fact that one hundred years after the end of the Civil War, people are still taught songs that expressed a lingering hatred of what the Yankees had done: “I’m a Good Old Rebel” — written by a former Confederate officer and first published in 1914:I hates the Yankee nation, and everything they do,I hates the Declaration of Independence too.I hates the glorious Union, ’tis dripping with our blood I hates their striped banner, I fought it all I could.Three hundred thousand Yankees lie stiff in Southern dust;We got three hundred thousand, before they conquered usThey died of Southern fever, and Southern steel and shot,I wish they was three million, instead of what we got.Or to take a more recent (1974), less poetic example, from Lynyrd Skynyrd:Well I heard Mr. Young sing about her,Well I heard old Neil put her down.Well, I hope Neil Young will remember,A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.Finally, the removal of the federal soldiers from the streets and from statehouse offices signalled the end of the Republican Party’s commitment to protecting the civil and political rights of African Americans, and marked a major political turning point in American history: it ended Reconstruction. ................
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