Big Picture

Questions

1. What is Presidential Reconstruction?
2. What is the Ku Klux Klan Act?
3. Why did W.E.B. DuBois refer to the Reconstruction period as a “splendid failure”?
4. What kinds of improvements did Reconstruction governments make in the South?
5. What role did historians play in sketching Reconstruction as a total failure?

Answers

1. A series of plans put forth by presidents Lincoln and Johnson that were fairly lenient in terms of enforcing the constitutional rights and liberties of freed blacks.  It was, thus, insufficient in the minds of “radical” Republicans who insisted on full protection of the rights of freedmen.
2. Federal legislation that gave the government the power over states and individuals who tried to deprive freed slaves of their newfound rights. It was the first federal act to intervene so forcefully on behalf of its citizens.
3. He felt Reconstruction failed, not because blacks were innately inferior or incompetent as so many whites thought.  Blacks, he argued, learned the uses of political power and governed reasonably well despite the hostile and violent environment in the war-torn South.
4. They established some of the first public and social services in the south; they collected taxes to fund public schools, expand hospitals, and build asylums.
5. Historians of the period wrote seething histories of the period that exaggerated instances of corruption and bribery, decried the treatment of white southerners, and told racist tales of the ignorance and savage lust of black officeholders.