Reconstruction was a conflict in three areas The

Reconstruction was a conflict in three areas. The first area was who was to conduct it, the executive or the legislative branch. This led to political battles between Johnson and the Radical Republicans. The second area was between Radical Republicans and a white South that refused to be reconstructed. A third area of conflict was between black and white with the latter trying to diminish any gains of the former slaves by enacting black codes and by condoning groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Eventually Reconstruction would fail because the Radicals lost the will to struggle and the Republican Party became more identified with business. A disputed election in 1877 ended in a compromise that allowed Hayes to take the presidency if federal troops were withdrawn from the South.

The Progressive interpretation portrayed the Radical Republicans as agents of Northern capitalism who used former slaves against the former slave owners. Eric Foner: “Over a half-century ago, Charles and Mary Beard coined the term “The Second American Revolution” to describe a transfer in power, wrought by the Civil War, from the South’s “planting aristocracy” to “Northern capitalists and free farmers. ”

Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863 – 1877 by Eric Foner [1988] “Negro rule” was a myth. The Freedman’s Bureau worked with former slave owners to return the freed blacks to the plantations as workers. His three key themes: [1] blacks were active agents in the Reconstruction of the South; [2] slaves became free laborers and eventually became “equal citizens; ” and [3] although racism was pervasive at the local, state and national levels, some Whites worked hard for social justice as well as political and economic equality former slaves and received similar mistreatment.

“. . . how essentially non-revolutionary and conservative Reconstruction really was. ” C. Van Woodward [1979]

The Politics of Reconstruction