Was Reconstruction A Failure Of Reconstruction

The Confederate States of America lost the Civil War, but they won the peace that came afterwards. In terms of race relations, whites defeated the goals of the Radical Republicans and historians agree that Reconstruction was a failure. After Reconstruction, the inferiority of blacks was codified in Jim Crow laws. However, this peace came at a high price for whites and blacks in that the South sank into an economic doldrum that lasted for decades. In terms of industry and economic development, the South remained backwards when compared to the North and West. These two factors led white Southerners to cling to the memory of the antebellum period and a heritage that has froze the legacy of the peculiar intuition as part of the South’s identity.

The Ku Klux Klan, made up of former Confederate officers who idealized an antebellum Southern heritage, became folk heroes by terrorizing outsiders who challenged race relations by assisting blacks. Catholics, foreigners, former slaves, and their sympathizers were targeted for wanting to push reforms that went against the Southern way of life. As one historian points out, the KKK gained sympathy because they were seen as defenders and policemen of the people who protected the prevailing values of society, including Protestantism, whiteness, and genteel southern culture (Kinshasa 15). The KKK and its sister organizations were even sponsored by state governments, such as Kentucky and Mississippi, as a police force to maintain the status quo (Parsons 160). The presence of the Klan and other forms of white resistance offered white residents a form of security during this uncertain time period. White who were fearful that the North would confiscate everything and turn them over to blacks for retribution, could feel secure that the Ku Klux Klan and other southern “defenders” would assist

Through Jim Crow, the whites recreated the racial hierarchy of the antebellum period. Jim Crow effectively made blacks second-class citizens in the eye of the law, with voting laws that disenfranchised against poorly-educated and under-employed blacks by requiring literary tests and poll taxes, and which discriminated against blacks through the “separate but equal” doctrine. This codified racism was a leftover from the Civil War, in which whites believed that blacks were incapable of running society, businesses, or exercising political rights. In one study of a community in Mississippi, one historian argues that newspapers warned readers that “idle darkies” were lazy, lacked morals, and threatened white civilization (Oshinsky 18). These reasons were also used during the antebellum era to justify slavery and this continuing mentality demonstrates a southern lifestyle that was immune to change. Southern identity was built around placing blacks at an inferior level than whites, and whites refused to surrender this belief. The Confederacy lost the war, but southern values continued strong throughout the