a short history of reconstruction 1863 1877

These paramilitary bands also used violence and threats of violence to undermine the Republican vote. In the 1870s, paramilitary organizations, such as the White League in Louisiana and Red Shirts in Mississippi and North Carolina, undermined the Republicans, disrupting meetings and political gatherings. While the elite planter class often supported insurgencies, violence against freedmen and other Republicans was usually carried out by other whites the secret Ku Klux Klan chapters developed in the first years after the war as one form of insurgency. The Reconstruction governments were unpopular with many White Southerners, who were not willing to accept defeat and continued to try to prevent black political activity by any means. Some were elected to office in the Southern states, or were appointed to positions. Numerous educated blacks moved to the South to work for Reconstruction. The Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the civil rights of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws), and Fifteenth Amendment (prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude), enshrined such political rights in the Constitution. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly-freed slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens and the votes they would cast for the party.

They generally were led by the White yeomanry and they dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.ĭuring Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces, and Southern state governments were dominated by Republicans, elected largely by freedmen and allies. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, ' carpetbaggers', and ' scalawags'. They sought to regain their political power and enforce white supremacy.

Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War.

A short history of reconstruction 1863 1877