<i>The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era</i>. Find using OpenURL The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era (review) In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: This study of the liberal republican movement provides a sympathetic treatment of a small group of Republicans who were the founders of a challenge to the Republican party and the Ulysses S. Grant administration during the election of 1872. The author specifically identifies twenty-three individuals he regards as core members of this group. They were "among the educated elite of America" (xxiii), and they had participated actively in the formation of the Republican party in the 1850s and had supported the Union cause during the Civil War. This group only reluctantly supported many of the Union government war policies, which expanded and centralized federal power and threatened their long-standing faith in limited government and "classical republicanism" (210).
Copyright © 2008 The Kent State University Press Howard W. Allen, H. TENANT FARMING AND SHARECROPPING. When the Civil War ended, the big question concerned the state of the freed slaves of the South. Recovery of the southern economy depended on getting the freedmen back into the cotton fields. During the period of Reconstruction the Radical Republicans in Congress tried to convert the freedmen into small free-holding farmers, but the former slaves were simply not ready to manage their own farms. What emerged out of necessity was southern farm tenancy, a system of near slavery without legal sanctions. Instead of working in gangs as they had on antebellum plantations, the freedmen became tenants. The planter or landowner assigned each family a small tract of land to farm and provided food, shelter, clothing, and the necessary seeds and farm equipment. In the decades after Reconstruction tenancy and sharecropping became the way of life in the Cotton Belt.
As farm tenancy grew, a tenancy ladder evolved. Between 1900 and 1910 the numbers of white tenants doubled. BIBLIOGRAPHY: David E. Sharecropping - Black History. Carpetbaggers & Scalawags - American Civil War. In general, the term “carpetbagger” refers to a traveler who arrives in a new region with only a satchel (or carpetbag) of possessions, and who attempts to profit from or gain control over his new surroundings, often against the will or consent of the original inhabitants.
After 1865, a number of northerners moved to the South to purchase land, lease plantations or partner with down-and-out planters in the hopes of making money from cotton. At first they were welcomed, as southerners saw the need for northern capital and investment to get the devastated region back on its feet. They later became an object of much scorn, as many southerners saw them as low-class and opportunistic newcomers seeking to get rich on their misfortune. 15th Amendment to the Constitution: Primary Documents of American History (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress)
14th Amendment | Constitution | US Law. Amendment XIV Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. Section 3. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
Section 5. Civil Rights Act of 1866 Facts, information, pictures. Christopher A. Bracey The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27) was a momentous chapter in the development of civic equality for newly emancipated blacks in the years following the Civil War. The act accomplished three primary objectives designed to integrate blacks into mainstream American society.
First, the act proclaimed "that all persons born in the United States ... are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States. " Third, the act made it unlawful to deprive a person of any of these rights of citizenship on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of slavery or involuntary servitude. The roots of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 are traceable to the Emancipation Proclamation, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, which freed slaves held in bondage in the rebel states. A second military goal was to secure a labor source to support the everexpanding Union military efforts. Du Bois, W. Foner, Eric. Hyman, Harold M., and William M. Kennedy, Randall. The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s . Fatal Flood . WGBH American Experience. Library of Congress A speech given by LeRoy Percy convinced the citizens of Greenville to support a resolution condemning the Klan The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers and other Southerners opposed to Reconstruction after the Civil War.
In the waning years of Reconstruction the Klan disbanded. Nearly 50 years later, in 1915, "Colonel" William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan after seeing D. W. In its second incarnation, the Klan moved beyond just targeting blacks, and broadened its message of hate to include Catholics, Jews and foreigners. Members of the KKK. Their message struck a cord, and membership in the Klan ballooned in the 1920s. In the 1920s, the Klan moved in many states to dominate local and state politics. But when the Klan came to recruit in the town of Greenville, Mississippi, LeRoy Percy, moved to keep the Klan out of his town.
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow . Jim Crow Stories . The Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in the winter of 1865-66 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social club by six Confederate veterans. In the beginning, the Klan was a secret fraternity club rather than a terrorist organization. (Ku Klux was derived from the Greek "kuklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.) The costume adopted by its members (disguises were quite common) was a mask and white robe and high conical pointed hat. The Klan spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South and included mayors, judges, and sheriffs as well as common criminals. The Klan systematically murdered black politicians and political leaders. It beat, whipped, and murdered thousands, and intimidated tens of thousands of others from voting. -- Richard Wormser.
America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War. Introduction Reconstruction, one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history, began during the Civil War and ended in 1877. It witnessed America's first experiment in interracial democracy. Just as the fate of slavery was central to the meaning of the Civil War, so the divisive politics of Reconstruction turned on the status the former slaves would assume in the reunited nation. Reconstruction remains relevant today because the issues central to it -- the role of the federal government in protecting citizens' rights, and the possibility of economic and racial justice -- are still unresolved.
Northern victory in the Civil War decided the fate of the Union and of slavery, but posed numerous problems. Central to Reconstruction was the effort of former slaves to breathe full meaning into their newly acquired freedom, and to claim their rights as citizens. For all Americans, Reconstruction was a time of fundamental social, economic, and political change.