Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Historical accounts of reconstructive memory played an main(prenominal) part in this retreat from the holy man of comparability. For much(prenominal) of the 20th century, both bookish and popular authorship presented reconstructive memory as the lowest floor in the saga of American history. Supposedly, Radical republicans in Congress revengefully fastened fatal supremacy upon the disappointed Confed datecy and an bout of corruption and misgovernment followed, presided over by unscrupulous carpetbaggers (northerners who ventured due south to reap the spoils of office), scalawags ( fair southerners who coop sequenceted with the Republican Party for personalised gain), and ignorant and dim-witted freed people. After much needless suffering, the Souths white community band together to unsex home feel (a euphemism for white supremacy). Originating in the political propaganda of Reconstructions opponents, this reading rested on the assumption that African Americans were b y nature incapable of move in elected government and that black suffrage was the gravest misunderstanding of the polite war outlying(prenominal)e period. This quite faulty memory of Reconstruction was invoked for decades as a potent justification of the Souths racial precondition quo in the era of segregation and disenfranchisement. much recently, in the rout out of the civil rights gyration of the 1960s, scholars have interpreted a far more harmonic approach to Reconstruction, covering it as an effort, imposing if flawed, to create racial democracy in the South. The tragedy was not that it was attempted, but that it failed. Overall, the era of the Civil fight and Reconstruction raised(a) questions that remain telephone exchange to our understanding of ourselves as a nation. What should be the balance of actor between topical anesthetic authority and the field of study government; who is authorize to American citizenship; what argon the meanings of freedom and equality in the linked States? These questions remain subjects of fray today. In that sense, the Civil War is not yet over.