Ugh the Finf

Robert Roxy

Period 2

12/10/15

Mrs. Reynolds

After the civil war, the Federal government went to many lengths to try and help freedmen in former slave states. These actions were dubbed reconstruction. But these expansions were quickly terminated after Rutherford B. Hayes was elected in 1876, the image in document 13 shows the election results. The South had started to limit the rights of blacks within the boundaries that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments allowed. And the North started to turn a blind eye to all of the problems that existed in the South. In the end, both states contributed to the end of reconstitution, but the South made more efforts to persecute blacks than the North did. Although both the North and the South were responsible for ending reconstruction, the South was mainly responsible for the end of reconstruction in the U.S.

In the South, reconstruction efforts by Northerners and Southerners alike were challenging because of attacks by racially biased groups. A group called the Ku Klux Klan led these efforts. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) attacked both blacks who were trying to gain political power, and whites who were helping them or were helping with the general reconstruction effort. This is seen well in document 6 where 2 white guys are holding guns up to a Negro man’s head. Many soldiers and Northerners who were helping the efforts (dubbed carpetbaggers), were wary of helping the efforts if it was going to be that risky. The political cartoon in document 4 illustrates this, because it shows a donkey with KKK written on is walking away from a tree, leaving a carpetbagger to hang.

Many freedmen were wary of trying to gain political power as well, as a result of the KKK’s efforts. Abram Colby, a freedman running for Georgia representative described this. He said he was taken to the woods by Klan members and beaten, but refused to stop voting radical. The radical party was the radical Republican Party that felt the South should be punished for...