Szdfan wrote:Back to the topic at hand, the 1877 removal of federal troops from the South (often called "The Great Compromise" or "The Great Betrayal") was one of the major reasons that reforms attempted by Reconstruction failed. It's during the 1870's and 80's that Jim Crow and the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" emerged that codified legal segregation though out the South (The term "Jim Crow" was first used in 1892).
Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections. Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote but gave no relief to most blacks.
What did the South look like before 1877? How did it change between 1890 and 1910?
Why didn't the end of slavery mean freedom on an equal footing with whites? What happened?
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Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?
Szdfan wrote:Back to the topic at hand, the 1877 removal of federal troops from the South (often called "The Great Compromise" or "The Great Betrayal") was one of the major reasons that reforms attempted by Reconstruction failed. It's during the 1870's and 80's that Jim Crow and the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" emerged that codified legal segregation though out the South (The term "Jim Crow" was first used in 1892).
Blacks were still elected to local offices throughout the 1880s, but their voting was suppressed for state and national elections. Democrats passed laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive, with the result that political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease. Between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states, starting with Mississippi, passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests, and residency and record-keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses temporarily permitted some illiterate whites to vote but gave no relief to most blacks.
What did the South look like before 1877? How did it change between 1890 and 1910?
Why didn't the end of slavery mean freedom on an equal footing with whites? What happened?
I wonder if it was simply too tall an order - that the postbellum North lacked the sustained will to continue occupying a semi-foreign land in the name of a people that they expected/hoped would remain in the South? In point of fact it was on the North to ensure continued integration and guard the equal rights of the newly freed slaves; the South was never going to do that on their own. While the Radical Republicans certainly were the driving force behind the success of Reconstruction the majority of the North, happy the war was over and enjoying the reinvigorated economy, slowly lost the will to see Reconstruction through. Of course it was the corrupt bargain between Democrats that wanted to end Reconstruction and the Republicans that wanted Rutherford Hayes in the presidency, that put the final nail in the coffin, but support for its continuation had been waning for quite a while. This doesn’t absolve them of their obvious moral failure but neither is it difficult to understand their lack of enthusiasm. It’s not unlike, though not perfectly analogous to, our opposition to abortion. We make full-throated denunciations of it in the safe-spaces of our homes, churches and online message boards. We post things to social media and perhaps vote for a pro-life candidate but we are, very much like the Northerners, comfortable in the knowledge that we have the correct views but not willing to take any real risk in ending the atrocity.
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Affiliation: Lancaster Mennonite Conference & Honduran Mennonite Evangelical Church
