Reconstruction represents the often forgotten conclusion to the Civil War, an attempt to address the social injustices that resulted from over two centuries of slavery. Reconstruction basis of hardship, that still disease the US. Civil rights freed of racial and gender limitations, race relations, states rights versus federal laws, the rise of financial and business trusts, the foundations for all the “up-to-date” issues are succinctly excavated. In reality, very little progress in restoring rights to freed men during the first year or two after the civil war under Johnson’s “moderate” approach. It was only after the “Radicals” forced federal intervention that blacks made significant progress. Democrats began to make headway in the south, often by the use of intimidation and violence, and what remained of the Republican Party began to change its agenda. After the war a north and south, black and white, political party feud, among rich whites, the poor white southerners, and the emancipated slaves. Changing the lives of many of the nations groups forever, not necessarily for the better.

Almost universal educated and popular acceptance from the turn of the 20th Century until the 50s helped the rapacious and vindictive ultraistic Republicans took control of reconstruction process from the just and magnanimous policies of Andrew Johnson and installed in the south state governments dominated by unscrupulous and incompetent white carpetbaggers and scalawags. These state governments were monuments to misgovernment and corruption, and the entire region breathed a collective relief when the white “redeemers” finally forced them out of office. The black freedmen were portrayed as ignorant, infantile, incapable of self-government, and prone to political and economic manipulation in the account of Reconstruction. Revisionist scholars, beginning as early as 1909 with W.E.B. Dubois (Progressions) seminal paper about the subject but really not gaining momentum until the 50s, held that the Dunning school was substantially in error about the progress and nature of Reconstruction, and that this error was largely caused by bald racial prejudice. Booker T. Washington, more in favor of populism. The famous debate between Washington and W.E.B. Dubois over the aims of “industrial

Some topics in this essay:
Civil War, WEB Dubois, Percent Plan”, Republican Party, Andrew Johnson, Freeman’s Bureau, Dubois Progressions, Republicans Democrats, Viewed Reconstruction, Civil Rights, social political, political economic, web dubois, civil war, rights freed, political ascendancy, civil rights, history reconstruction,