North or South: who killed Reconstruction? Things are going into chaos. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is violently murdering people, the north is turning against Reconstruction, and racism is everywhere! It was 1876 and there was excitement in the U.S. It was the Declaration of Independence’s 100th anniversary (Background Essay paragraph 1). Everything was going well until the Election of 1876. Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden were running against each other. The election caused quite a conflict. People even said that there might be another Civil War. To steer away from this, an agreement was made. This agreement was called the Compromise of 1877. This compromise permitted Hayes the presidency, but there was a catch in it. In order for Hayes to have the presidency he would have to remove the Federal soldiers from the south, Hayes agreed (Background Essay paragraphs 4-5). This was a big mistake. Southern resistance killed reconstruction by having the Ku Klux Klan murdering …show more content…
I can tell why people think that the North ended reconstruction. One reason is that President Grant had been so focused on trying to get rid of the KKK and other terrorist groups, that he took his attention off of reconstruction (Doc. C para. 1). If Grant had stayed focused on Reconstruction then it probably still could have worked, but it is still the south's fault for ending reconstruction. If the KKK hadn’t been terrorising the North, and Blacks then Grants attention never would have gone away from Reconstruction. Another reason why it could have been the North's fault is because there was racism in the North too (Doc. D para. 1)), but the racism wasn’t as bad as in the South. In the South they abused Blacks, but in the North they just limited the Blacks rights. There are many different reasons if the North or South killed reconstruction, but we will never know who truly killed