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Achievements of Reconstruction

Achievements of Reconstruction-Era State Governments

  • civil rights laws and judicial reform

  • public school in all southern states

  • other public institutions:

    • asylums

    • hospitals

    • orphanages

    • prisons

  • infrastructure and economic development projects

Ordinary Black Southerners and Reconstruction

  • most efforts at land redistribution, economic equality fell short

  • cotton industry revived post-war

  • labor systems renegotiated, most commonly as sharecropping

    • families farmed parcels of larger estates

    • received a share of profits from the crop sale

    • often led to dependency and debt to their landlords

  • a range of outcomes for black southerners

  • economic gains disappointed most

End of Reconstruction

  • southern whites pushed back at every step

  • panic of 1837 → economic depression, labor conflict

    • undercut northern support for Reconstruction

    • many white Republicans backed away from supporting racial equality

  • new group of white southern democrats “redeemers” gained power

    • won the House of Representatives, 1874

    • control of state governments, mid-late 1870s

  • 1876 presidential election was close and contested

    • Rutherford Hayes (R) vs Samuel Tilden (D)

    • Hayes lost the popular vote by 250,000

    • won the electoral college by 1 vote

  • fears of a new sectional crisis

  • compromise of 1877

    • Hayes becomes President

    • federal troops withdraw from the South

    • special economic favors to the South

“Undoing” Reconstruction in South

  • post 1877, white southerners suppressed black civil rights

    • 1890-1910, new or amended state constitutions disenfranchised black people

      • legally colorblind measures: poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.

    • “Jim Crow” laws segregated and denied black civil rights

    • Klan-style terrorist violence and lynching

  • legal discrimination remained until the mid-20th century

Achievements of Reconstruction

Achievements of Reconstruction-Era State Governments

  • civil rights laws and judicial reform

  • public school in all southern states

  • other public institutions:

    • asylums

    • hospitals

    • orphanages

    • prisons

  • infrastructure and economic development projects

Ordinary Black Southerners and Reconstruction

  • most efforts at land redistribution, economic equality fell short

  • cotton industry revived post-war

  • labor systems renegotiated, most commonly as sharecropping

    • families farmed parcels of larger estates

    • received a share of profits from the crop sale

    • often led to dependency and debt to their landlords

  • a range of outcomes for black southerners

  • economic gains disappointed most

End of Reconstruction

  • southern whites pushed back at every step

  • panic of 1837 → economic depression, labor conflict

    • undercut northern support for Reconstruction

    • many white Republicans backed away from supporting racial equality

  • new group of white southern democrats “redeemers” gained power

    • won the House of Representatives, 1874

    • control of state governments, mid-late 1870s

  • 1876 presidential election was close and contested

    • Rutherford Hayes (R) vs Samuel Tilden (D)

    • Hayes lost the popular vote by 250,000

    • won the electoral college by 1 vote

  • fears of a new sectional crisis

  • compromise of 1877

    • Hayes becomes President

    • federal troops withdraw from the South

    • special economic favors to the South

“Undoing” Reconstruction in South

  • post 1877, white southerners suppressed black civil rights

    • 1890-1910, new or amended state constitutions disenfranchised black people

      • legally colorblind measures: poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.

    • “Jim Crow” laws segregated and denied black civil rights

    • Klan-style terrorist violence and lynching

  • legal discrimination remained until the mid-20th century