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Compare And Contrast The North And The South After The Civil War

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The winner has always written the history books. So, it came as no surprise that after the North’s victory in the American Civil War, the South was seen as the villain during the Reconstruction Era, all while the North was innocent and spot-free. The truth, however, said differently. The North was not nearly as innocent in Reconstruction, to the point where the Northern states, as a whole, could have killed reconstruction altogether. Reconstruction, in simple terms, was the effort to bring the Southern states back into the nation and mend the Union as one after the Southern states seceded and caused the Civil War. This effort ended when President Rutherford B. Hayes ordered a removal of troops from the Southern states in 1877 – just 12 years …show more content…

While the fraudulent leadership was not what destroyed the movement, it caused people to turn their focus away from the problems that were relevant to the Southern half of the nation. First, political cartoons were popularly used to express public opinion, good or bad. In a cartoon from 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant is drawn searching and trying to reach the bottom of a barrel, filled with the scandals of the time, such as with the press, whiskey, and states. (Harper’s Weekly, 1876) Additionally, in the words of Gerald Danzer, “… Northern voters grew indifferent to event in the South. Weary of the ‘Negro Question’ and ‘sick of carpet-bag’ government, many Northern voters shifted their attention to such national concerns as … corruption in Grant’s administration…” (Gerald Danzer et al., The Americans, McDougal Littell, 1998.) Danzer attempted to relay to the reader that the Northerners were tired of hearing of all the problems but nothing was being done, so instead they started to just focus on something else entirely. Thirdly, Danzer explicitly stated that “… the tide of public opinion in the North began to turn against Reconstruction policies.” (Danzer) This statement was short but powerful against the Union states, and further proved how the North decided to blatantly turn their backs on the South and the …show more content…

Even the most pro-Freedmen, pro-equal rights Republicans vocalized opinions that rang loud and clear against the freedmen. For instance, the Boston Evening Transcript – a firmly pro-Freedmen publication - was quoted and said, “the blacks, as a people, are unfitted for the proper exercise of political duties,” that showed how even the most supportive Northerners thought that Blacks should not be equal. (Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001) Additionally, the publication said that the Freedmen needed to forget how cruel slavery was before they could become a politician, probably to prevent retaliation against whites for years of mistreatment towards Blacks. Thirdly, in Harper’s Weekly, an artist drew an image of South Carolina’s Legislature. In this image, the African-Americans who were in the legislature are portrayed as wild and unruly, which caused the Northerners to think that Freedmen should not be in positions that could change the laws. (The cover of Harper’s Weekly, March 14, 1874) All three of these instances show how some of the most pro-Freedmen Northerners held an overall racist opinion towards

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There was much tension in the Reconstruction. The north killed Reconstruction in the south because the government frauds took away all President

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The people of the Confederate States were people who did not agree with Lincoln’s beliefs and ideas. President Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I think Lincoln said this quote because he is trying to say that even though the United States became two nations, it will not be able to go against its

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their point is valid they gave them rights and protection then they removed protection they became racist and wanted them out of the government. (Doc D Paragraph One) The Northern Neglect got tired of the freedmen's problems and the ‘carpet-bag government’. They north shifted their attention and their opinion was against Reconstruction policies. (Doc C Paragraph One)

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Revealing the anxieties towards this northern aggression, the speech vilifies Republicans for their coercive approach to political reform. Moreover, Republicans are presented as a single-issue party of abolitionists throughout the work, which reveals how this “horde” worried Southerners in a time of uncertainty. (58) The unconditional drive to prohibit the expansion and abolish the institution of slavery concerns Southerners, as it would

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As you know being in an army could be quite difficult for soldiers. Both Union soldiers and Confederate soldiers train everyday and do certain duties to get ready for the American Civil War. However, there are huge differences between the two armies. Before the war started, most of the soldiers from both North and South had been farmers. If the Southerners did not farm they either became carpenters, mechanics, merchants, machinist, lawyers, teachers, blacksmiths, or a dentist.

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I believe that in their frustrations with the contradicting promise of the New South, Southern policymakers as well as white Southerners in general began to look towards segregation as a solution to the many of the problems that appeared throughout Southern life after the Reconstruction period. In the book, Ayers provides an intricate summary of the American South after the Reconstruction period but before the beginning of the twentieth century. Ayers goes into detail about every aspect of Southern life during this time period, such as politics, social issues, and the economy, and consequently reveals the difficulties and contradictions found throughout the South during this time period. He notes how publications began to call it the 'New

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The image printed in the Harper’s Weekly newspaper shortly after the Emancipation depicts the treatment of slaves before the Proclamation, African Americans living their

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Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech in Savannah is unquestionably the most famous speech associated with the Confederacy. Stephens was speaking extemporaneously and later complained that his views had been distorted and taken out of context by Northern abolitionists. We have already seen that Alexander Stephens gave another version of the Cornerstone Speech a month later at the Virginia Convention. The fundamental racialist worldview articulated in both speeches is more or less the same: The status of the African negro in the Southern states was “the immediate cause” of secession. It was the “occasion” or “incident” of secession, which is to say, the spark that ignited the blaze.

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After the Civil War in 1865, Republicans in Congress introduced a series of Constitutional Amendments to secure civil and political rights for African Americans. The right that gave black men the privilege to vote provoked the greatest controversy, especially in the North. In 1867, Congress passed the law and African American men began voting in the South, but in the North, they kept denying them this basic right (“African Americans,” 2016). Republicans feared that they would eventually lose control of Congress on the Democrats and thought that their only solution was to include the black men votes. Republicans assumed that all African American votes would go to all the Republicans in the North, as they did in the South and by increasing the

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Both southerners and northerners had to rebuild the south, but a lot of southerners rejected the help and just wanted it to be back to normal with slaves and cash crops. The question to this DBQ is: “North or South: Who destroyed the rebuilding of the south’s economy?”. The south resistence destroyed the the reconstruction even though the north forgot about the reconstruction, the KKK was distracting the north from the reconstruction by harassing the government

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This means that if the South is unwilling to cooperate, then Lincoln will be unafraid to make the South fall from cutting slavery from under

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The utter contempt and loathing for the venerated Stars and Stripes, the abhorrence of the very words United States, the intense hatred of the Yankee on the part of these people.” The South perceived the North as a tyrannical power, and South Carolina’s secession emphasizes the relationship between the right to revolution and separation from the Union paying homage to the American Revolution. The Union’s defeat furthered the

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While there were exceptions of individuals fighting for more than equality by law for African Americans, such as John D. Baldwin who argued “a question concerning human rights” (Frederickson 379), there were racist ideals held that transcended political parties and regional affiliations alike. Radical democrats sought the most resistance with political leaders such as Representative James Brooks who preached in opposition to integration by claiming “the negro is not the equal of the white man, much less his master” (Frederickson 379). Arguments of black inferiority became based upon the false ethnology presented by Josiah Nott that physically and mentally ranked the black race below other races. Even radical republicans became contradictory in their views claiming African Americans were different due to their inability to conquer and dominate like white people had; insinuating that white domination could not be challenged. Although there was a period following the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 in which former slaves were granted citizenship, their involvement in politics became rendered by the lack of education previously provided to slaves and inability of “withstanding the economic, political, and paramilitary opposition of the white majority” (Frederickson 382).

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The South decided to continue to fight about the ‘Carpet-Bag’ government and resisted the North’s help when it was offered. Reconstruction slowly died when the South kept resisting the help from the North. In the South, people such as the KKK took control of the South and the North got sick of it. Southerners resisted help and decided to use an corrupt government and ideas in the South.

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But, when these officials were elected to Congress, they passed the “black codes” and thus the relations between the president and legislators became worst (Schriefer, Sivell and Arch R1). These so called “Black Codes” were “a series of laws to deprive blacks of their constitutional rights” that they were enacted mainly by Deep South legislatures. Black Codes differ from a state to another but they were stricter in the Deep South as they were sometimes irrationally austere. (Hazen 30) Furthermore, with the emergence of organizations such as the Red Shirts and the White League with the rise of the Conservative White Democrats’ power, efforts to prevent Black Americans from voting were escalating (Watts 247), even if the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution that gave the Blacks the right to vote had been ratified in 1870.

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