Reconstruction

The period immediately following the American Civil War is known as the
Reconstruction Era when the United States favored integration
of the rebellious slave states and the newly freed black population with the rest of
the nation after the war. The interpretation of the reconstruction was
the subject of intense debate and conflict. As the decades progressed, historians
came up with different interpretations. It can be said that these interpretations
often reflect the times of the historians writing them, as prevailing politics,
race relations, and economic conditions influence their explanations. Historian
Claude G. Bowers argued that Reconstruction was a "tragic era" in American
history. Most historians also believe Reconstruction was a failure, although each
has their reason for believing so. The following answer examines various
historians' interpretations of Reconstruction and whether it is right to call it the
"Tragic Age".

The traditional interpretation of Reconstruction said that it was the

darkest period in American history when American political and social life fell
apart. This traditional interpretation began in the 1870s as part of
Southern Democratic anti-reconstruction propaganda. President
Lincoln probably planned a quick and painless readmission of the Southern states
as equal members. His untimely death meant that his plan could not be carried
out. His successor, Andrew Johnson, tried to implement Lincoln's plan but was
unable to do so because of radical Republicans and northern capitalists who
plundered the South and forced black supremacy on the defeated
Confederacy. This traditional interpretation held that freed slaves were ignorant
and childish and therefore unable to exercise the political power entrusted to
them properly.

In 1907, Booker T. Washington noted that African Americans were

"rather the agitators than the victims of the errors of the
establishment." The Southern view of Reconstruction, on the other hand,
undoubtedly blamed the victimization of Southern whites and mainly the federal
government and carpetbaggers for the tragedy of Reconstruction.

That version of history, already circulating in the press and popular literature of
the day, gained scientific legitimacy through the work of William A. Dunning and
John W. Burgess and their students at Columbia University, and became known as
the Dunning School. Segregation influenced how white historians interpreted
Reconstruction in the early 20th century, as did the desire of white Americans to
reconcile the North-South divide. Since the 20th century, memorial ceremonies at
Gettysburg and other Civil War battlefields have celebrated the sacrifices of white
soldiers on both sides and claimed that those sacrifices made the nation
stronger. These ceremonies omitted references to the role of slavery in the
Civil War and ignored the contributions of African-American soldiers to the Union
war effort. Attempts at reconciliation between the North and the South ignored
much of what happened during Reconstruction. Many historians of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries portrayed the South as a victim of federal excess and
misguided racial policies—rather than a backward region that resisted
Congressional efforts to create racial equality.

In his 1929 book The Tragic Era, historian Claude G. Bowers accused
the Freedmen's Bureau, the Union League, and other organizations that
encouraged black political participation of teaching southern blacks to
"hate" southern whites. He argued
that ex-slaves had no opportunity to work with such groups: "Simple
liberties were easy victims of their frustration." Burgess meant the same thing
when he characterized blacks as "children."

Historians of this school of Dunning have also emphasized the immoral motives of
its radical followers. They described the period as tragic and unfortunate in every
way. They blamed unscrupulous and corrupt Northern carpetbaggers
and men who had been outwitted by unscrupulous Radical Republicans in
Congress. These groups exploited unfortunate freedmen, wreaked havoc
across the board, and undermined both the economy and race relations of the
South for generations. The basic premise of that line of thinking was that
Southerners recognized their defeat at the hands of the Union and
wanted to follow a reasonable plan of Reconstruction in the period before radical
Reconstruction, 1865-1867. But despite the wholehearted acceptance of
the South of the goals presented by the North, it was forced to
accept the challenge of two Reconstruction Plans.

Modern historians, who focus on the plight of those freed after the war, question
Dunning's opinion. They find little evidence of the willingness
of Southern whites to adapt to any new role with freedom. Historians like Eric
Foner point to the passage of the Black Codes, the creation of
organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and the burning of black schools as evidence
that the white South was not ready to adapt. Foner also criticizes the
Dunning School for ignoring a key factor in Reconstruction - freed blacks.

At first, only African-American writers challenged the Dunning School and

the interpretation of Reconstruction. One of the most notable was W.E.B. Du
Bois. In 1935, he challenged the Dunning School's interpretation of Reconstruction
by publishing his book, Black Reconstruction: An Essay to a History of the
Part that Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in
America, 1860-1880. His book challenged the Dunning school by placing African
Americans at the center of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In response
to Burgess's characterization of African Americans as "children," Du Bois portrayed
former slaves, free blacks in the North, and their white allies as central actors in
the struggle to abolish slavery, restore the Union, and achieve racial and economic
equality. democracy equality Du Bois emphasized the efforts of Republican-led
state governments to secure suffrage and promote land distribution among
former slaves in the South. He argued that these efforts were thwarted
by both white property owners and northern business interests bent on
profiting and exploiting black labor.

While the Dunning School used racism to portray Southern whites as victims and
explain the failures of Reconstruction, Du Bois argued that racism and economic
interests worked together to limit the opportunities of African Americans and
poor whites. These factors prevented the success of Reconstruction and left a
large part of the South in poverty. However, Du Bois' work has been
largely ignored by most historians.

In the 1930s and 40s, an interpretation by revisionist historians led by Charles

A. Beard began to emerge. They focused on economics and downplayed political
and constitutional issues. They argued that the radical rhetoric of equal rights
was largely a smokescreen that obscured the true motives of Reconstruction and
its true supporters. Although Howard Beale acknowledged that some men, such
as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, were idealists, he argued that
Reconstruction was primarily a successful attempt by Republican financiers,
railroad builders, and Northeastern industrialists to control the national
government for its own sake. their own selfish financial goals. Those goals were
the continuation of wartime high protective tariffs, a new network of national
banks, and; currency To succeed, the business class had to eliminate the old ruling
agrarian class of the Southern planters and midwestern farmers. This they did
through Reconstruction, which made the South
Republican. Northeastern businessmen wanted to dominate the South
economically, which they did by owning railroads.

The last two decades have resulted in the emergence of a third school of writers,
usually called post-revisionists, who further refined the Reconstructionist point of
view. Post-revisionists tend to agree with the revisionist view of Reconstruction
but tend to be more pessimistic and skeptical about the outcome. The struggle
for African-American civil rights in the post-World War II era contributed
to Reconstruction. Writers such as John Hope Franklin and Kenneth Stamp
systematically dismantled almost every assumption of the traditional view.

Eric Foner writes that it is understandable that President Lincoln did not have
a unified plan for Reconstruction, but at the time of the assassination he was
considering the idea of black suffrage. According to Foner, Lincoln's
successor, Andrew Johnson, was a stubborn racist politician who was
uncompromising. By isolating himself from the broad currents of public opinion
that fueled Lincoln's career, Johnson created an impasse with Congress that
Lincoln would surely have avoided, thus throwing away his political power and
destroying his plans to rebuild the South. Radicals like Thaddeus Stevens and
Charles Sumner were seen as motivated by an irrational hatred of
the rebels. Now, however, they have become idealists in the best reform tradition
of the 19th century.

Revisionist historians also despise reconstruction. Works such as "After Slavery"

by Joel Williamson depicted a period of extraordinary political, social, and
economic development for blacks. The establishment of public school systems,
the granting of equal citizenship to blacks, the efforts to rebuild the economy
of the devastated South, and the attempt to build an interracial political
democracy from the ashes of slavery were all laudable achievements, not
the "Tragic Age" of Bowers. Unlike earlier writers, post-revisionists
emphasized the active role of freedom in shaping Reconstruction. By the end of
the 1960s, the old interpretation was completely reversed. The liberators of the
South were heroes, the old "redeemers" who won Reconstruction
were scoundrels, and if the era was "tragic", therefore, that change did not go far
enough. Reconstruction was a time of real progress, and its failure was a lost
opportunity for the South and the nation. However, the legacy of
Reconstruction (such as legislation like the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments) inspired future civil rights efforts.

Former slaves were not given land, so they remained economically

dependent on their former owners. The planter class survived both the war and
Reconstruction with most of their wealth (except for slaves) and prestige more or
less intact. Not only do the changing times contribute to this latest reassessment
of reconstruction, but also the concerns of historians. The historiography of
the last decade has been characterized by an emphasis on "social
history" and a downplaying of strictly political events. In
practice, this "social" concern meant that black suffrage and blacks, seen as the
most radical departure from the Reconstruction era, were
relatively unimportant. These historians observed the failure of
Reconstruction to create a democracy based on racial and economic equality.

In his 1988 book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, Eric Foner

presents his understanding of Reconstruction in light of several key issues. Like Du
Bois, Foner emphasizes the "centrality of the black experience" and expands on
the active and positive role of African Americans in
Reconstruction. Underlining the importance of free work, Foner
writes that "the transformation of slaves into free workers and equal citizens was
the most dramatic example of the social and political
changes started by Reconstruction." According to Foner, this change had the
potential to change Southern society for decades to come. It was a flawed
experiment that was the first attempt at true interracial democracy in the United
States.

Unlike Dunning School historians and Du Bois, Foner emphasizes the importance
of the federal government during Reconstruction, arguing that the period
marked among them "the emergence of the nation-state ... with vastly
expanded powers and new goals." the rights and protection of Americans of all
races. Foner and other modern historians have argued that the Civil War and
Reconstruction marked the beginning of the "activist state," in which the federal
government played an ever-increasing role in the lives of its citizens. Questions of
equality and the role of government in the lives of people and of people were,
according to Foner, questions to which the establishment constantly turned. These
questions, he writes, are "as old as the American Republic and as modern as the
inequalities that still plague our society." In his opinion, Reconstruction
remains "America's unfinished revolution" because it did not solve the problems
that America still faces. During the Reconstruction era, there was a revolution
in black civil rights and the role of the federal government in protecting those
rights, but it was a semi-revolution at best because Americans of the time lacked
the will and courage to see the struggle through.