Social Groups in New South

Social Groups in New South Examine the significant role played by the new social groups in the rise of the New South. In the twelve years after the Civil War—the era of Reconstruction—there were massive changes in American culture, economy, and politics. The political Reconstruction of the South progressed in two distinct eras. The first was Presidential Reconstruction (1865 – 67), when Andrew Johnson shaped the pace and depth of the reintegration of the South into the United States following the Confederacy’s surrender. The United States government, including President Lincoln, had defined no explicit and coherent plan for the post-war South and Lincoln’s assassination and Johnson’s rise to the presidency threw things into even greater uncertainty. Johnson, who had defended the Union as a United States senator and wartime governor of Tennessee and who was elected vice president under Lincoln in 1864, proved surprisingly lenient with white Southerners and unsympathetic to the people who had been held in slavery. Johnson hoped to create a national party devoted to the Union and sought the support of the former leaders of the South. He sacrificed black Southerners’ interests in the process. Under Johnson, white Southerners held on to all they could of the old order. They passed “Black Codes” that narrowly defined the possibilities of life for freed people, preventing them from renting land or owning firearms and placing their children in coercive “apprenticeships” to their former owners. Former Confederates violently attacked black people in New Orleans, Memphis, and in the countryside across the region. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized those who challenged white supremacy in any way. White Southerners resisted the Freedmen’s Bureau, which aided impoverished whites and blacks with surplus United States Army material, used special courts to adjudicate conflicts between freed people and their former masters, and tried to prevent violence against African Americans. Many freed blacks, previously forbidden to learn to read or write, wanted their children to receive the education that they themselves had been denied. The Congress-created Freedmen’s Bureau, assisted by former abolitionist organizations in the North, succeeded in establishing schools for thousands of blacks during the late 1860s. In addition, many former slaves established their own churches. White southern clergymen had often defended slavery in their sermons in the period before the Civil War. As a result, blacks distrusted their white congregations, so they created their own as soon as they had the opportunity. Reconstruction brought important social changes to former slaves. Families that had been separated before and during the Civil War were reunited, and slave marriages were formalized through legally recognized ceremonies. Families also took advantage of the schools established by the Freedmen's Bureau and the expansion of public education, albeit segregated, under the Reconstruction legislatures. New opportunities for higher education also became available with the founding soon after the Civil War of black colleges, such as Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The number of African‐American churches grew significantly and became social and political centers as well as houses of worship. Black ministers assumed a leadership role in the community and were among the first elected officials. The most fundamental concern of blacks through all of the changes, though, was economic survival.  Carpetbaggers & Scalawags Any white man who joined with black voters and allies in the Republican Party was castigated as a traitor to his race, as either a “scalawag” (a native white Southern Republican) or a “carpetbagger” (a white Northern Republican).  Carpetbaggers Carpetbaggers, a nickname for northerners, moved to the South after the Civil War. They were named for their tendency to carry their possessions with them in large carpetbags. Though some carpetbaggers migrated to strike it rich, most did so to promote modernization, education, and civil rights for former slaves in the South. Some carpetbaggers had influential roles in the new Republican state legislatures, much to the dismay of white southerners.  Scalawags During the period of Congressional Reconstruction after the Civil War (1867 – 1876), southern white Republicans were called ‘scalawags’ by their political opponents. The scalawags were considered traitors by many white southerners for supporting the party that had led the fight against Confederacy and now placed the defeated South under military rule. They were White Unionist Republicans in the South who participated in efforts to modernize and transform the region after the Civil War. Though many scalawags had influential roles in the new state governments, southern whites deemed them traitors. However, they were portrayed by the Democrats as shameless men of poor character, willing to sell their heritage as white men for a chance at a political office.  Sharecropping Despite efforts by white landowners to force blacks back into wage labor on large plantations, emancipation enabled southern blacks to rent their own plots of land, farm them, and provide for their families. A system of sharecropping emerged in which many former plantation owners divided their lands and rented out each plot, or share, to a black family. The family farmed their own crops and rented their plot of land in exchange for a percentage of their crop’s yield. Some poor, landless whites also became sharecroppers, farming lands owned by wealthy planter elites. By 1880, most of, many of farmers in the South were sharecroppers. Unfortunately, the economic prospects for blacks under the sharecropping system were usually poor. Many former slaves ended up sharecropping on land owned by their former masters, and the system kept blacks tied to their shares—their rented plots of land—and thereby indebted to white landowners. Moreover, because cotton prices dropped steadily from about 50% per pound in 1864 to a little over 10% per pound by the end of Reconstruction, sharecroppers’ incomes were meagre. Most black farmers could purchase items only on credit at local shops—almost always owned by their landlords—and thus went deep into debt.  The rise of the Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan, formed in Tennessee in 1866, was one of several secret societies that used intimidation and force, including murder, to advance white supremacy and bring an end to Republican rule. These organizations formed a tacit alliance with the Democratic Party in the South and played a key role in bringing about “Redemption,” the Democrats' term for their regaining control of the old Confederacy. Although the Klan was officially disbanded in 1869, Congress acted against its activities in a series of laws known collectively as the Enforcement Acts (1870–71). The legislation, which was intended to “enforce” the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and make it a crime for anyone to interfere with a citizen's right to vote, included the Ku Klux Klan Act, which outlawed conspiring, wearing disguises, and intimidating officials for the purpose of undermining the Constitution. President Grant used the law to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina, and he successfully prosecuted the Klan in that state. In the long run, however, federal officials found it as difficult to root out the Klan and other white supremacist groups as it was to make it possible for blacks to exercise their right to vote. The reconstruction was a constructive period in which political and economic unification of the north and south was brought about which assisted in the economic transformation of the US. It was constructive because America left behind its old legacy of slavery and began to develop new economic structures that assisted in their rapid economic growth and development of the country.  Conclusion As a historical process—the nation’s adjustment to the destruction of slavery - Reconstruction continued well after 1877. Blacks continued to vote and, in some states, hold office into the 1890s. But as a distinct era of national history—when Republicans controlled much of the South, blacks exercised significant political power, and the federal government accepted the responsibility for protecting the fundamental rights of all American citizens - Reconstruction had come to an end. Page 1 of 12