Government Failure In Reconstruction

Each of these four articles explain why the United States government failed in reconstruction based on generations that pass by. Thomas W. Wilson’s talks and displays about how the government attempted taking over the South. Carter Woodson pressures that most of the slaves were indignant while reconstruction was going on, where Thomas Bailey states that it’s the Radicals who are to be blamed for pushing it on the freed men. Lastly, Mary Beth Norton continues with the concern with the struggle of reconstruction that the South held from the beginning. Each author explains their understanding of why reconstruction had failed due to their generation and experience. Therefore, former slaves weren’t allowed a reasonable chance to rebuild their future

Wilson explains that bravery to the Southern whites who took the law into their own hands, since the government were forced to take the law into their own hands, since the government had ignored them. So these white men created a club known as the Klux Klan “to protect the southern country from some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution…”(11) Carter Woodson however, didn’t understand that the KKK were heroes but instead a terrorist group on the hunt for slaves only “could not tolerate the blacks as citizens.”(13) As they created themselves to scare the freed men by violence. Though another standpoint is Bailey’s, who didn’t consider the actions of the KKK to allow them to be called heroes or terrorists. He didn’t talk about all the lynching’s made famous by the KKK, but called their activities “tomfoolery”. (15) Finally, Norton goes into detail by saying that the leaders of the KKK “allowed factionalism along racial and class lines to undermine party unity.” (19) Norton describes more about the main reason as to why the KKK was created and the purpose of existing, which was to terrorize the freed slaves and to make the south the way it was before the