US history and Constitution

Standard USHC-3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of how regional and ideological differences led to the Civil War and an understanding of the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on democracy in America.

Summarize the end of Reconstruction, including the role of anti–African American factions and competing national interests in undermining support for Reconstruction; the impact of the removal of federal protection for freedmen; and the impact of Jim Crow laws and voter restrictions on African American rights in the post-Reconstruction era. USHC-3.4

The End of Reconstruction and the Effect Increasingly, the corruption of the Grant administration, economic depression in the North, the growing interest in western settlement, and economic growth replaced the nation’s interest in preserving the gains made in the Civil War. When the federal government abandoned its role of protector, democracy was compromised and the rights of African Americans were limited by southern state governments. The End of Reconstruction and the Effect

Ku Klux Klan were organized to intimidate black voters in the South. African Americans could vote only with the protection of federal troops There were never enough federal troops to protect the African American voters from both economic and physical intimidation and violence, including lynchings.

The resolve of the public and Congress to protect the freedman faded in the face of continuing resistance of southerners to granting equal citizenship to African Americans.

The disputed election of 1876 between Rutherford B The disputed election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden led to the Compromise of 1877. The resulting withdrawal of federal troops and their protection of the freedman brought an end to Reconstruction. The effect of Reconstruction was temporary and African Americans were left to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile environment.

In the two decades after the end of Reconstruction, the rights promised to the African Americans in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and protected by the national government during Reconstruction were gradually rescinded by southern state governments. Southern whites used race to drive a political wedge between poor black farmers and poor white farmers when farmers protested for political change in the 1890s. Southern states passed laws requiring African American and whites to use separate facilities.

Poll taxes and literacy tests all but eliminated the effectiveness of the fifteenth amendment for African Americans, while the grandfather clause assured that whites who could not read or pay the tax were able to vote. Segregation was upheld by the Supreme Court in the ‘separate but equal’ ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), that negated the equal protection provisions of the fourteenth Amendment and hastened the enactment of more Jim Crow laws.

Political Effect: Without the vote, African Americans could not protect themselves through their state governments.   Economic Effect: As cotton exhausted the soil and cotton prices fell, sharecroppers and tenant farmers found themselves in increasingly difficult economic conditions.

Solid South Republicans supported the African Americans but southern governments would remain under the control of white Democrats and be known as the “Solid South” until the Civil Rights era.