Reconstruction And The Myth Of The Lost Cause Analysis

Reconstruction and the Myth of the Lost Cause has been misinterpreted and in some cases, not even taught by most teachers. Reconstruction failures have affected “race relations” throughout the United States. Eric Foner said “ Today’s scholars believe that if the era was “tragic,” it was not because Reconstruction was attempted but because it failed.” Students throughout the United States need to be educated on the importance of Reconstruction and The Myth of the Lost Cause. Also, the Confederate monuments can relate back to the failure of Reconstruction and the Myth of the Lost Cause. According to Jennifer Schuessler from the article “Taking Another Look At the Reconstruction Era,” she defines Reconstruction as the period of time from the

The term the Lost Cause refers to Confederacy, which is the Confederate states of America (Lecture, 1-24-18). He fights over this every year because there are some teachers who try to glorify American history and sweep the bad things that happened in the United States under the rug. Locally, there even was a teacher in U-46 who refuses to teach some of the curriculum because it shows the bad things that America has done (Lecture, 2-6-18). This is a bad thing because all students are not being taught the same thing, and some teachers are skipping over topics. The instructor feels like Reconstruction needs to be taught about in every history class because it is a very important event that happened in American history (Lecture, 1-24-18). The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was also created in result of Reconstruction to help any person who was born in the United States with citizenship (Foner). It is important for people to know the importance acts, and laws that were put into place from the Reconstruction era. The 14th amendment was also created to give equal citizenship to everyone (Schuessler). The Civil Rights Act of 1866 ended the Jim Crow laws that were in place, and the Jim Crow laws allowed segregation to happen between white and black people

These statues are not only a part of our history, but also a landmark for people to see and learn about our country’s past. Reconstruction and the monuments were both interpreted in the wrong way. A quote from the article, “We Need to Move, Not Destroy, Confederate Monuments” said “when you find yourself at a crime scene, you don’t destroy the evidence. You preserve it for the prosecution. In the case of images like this, the prosecutor is history, and the trial may be a long one, stretching far into the future, with many witnesses called.” Eric Foner even mentions in his article that “But the era has long been misunderstood.” Both the monuments and Reconstruction need to be looked at in a different way than what they are right now. Jennifer Schuessler also stated in her article that “In recent decades, historians, most notably, Eric Foner, has discredited such stereotypes, painting a more inspiring picture of a hopeful if different era. But that work has been slow to seep into the consciousness.” This shows that people are not learning the truth about Reconstruction just like they are judging those sculptures the wrong way. William R. Black also states in his article that some former presidents had slaves, and people want their monuments to be taken down. However, the monuments were made to praise the good that those presidents have done