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CHAPTER 1

HISTORIANS & TEXTBOOKS:


THE “STORY” OF RECONSTRUCTION

INVESTIGATION
Your primary assignment is to determine how these accounts or Reconstruction differs from one another and
which one is most accurate.

Keep in mind the questions that the authors attempt to answer about Reconstruction.
Note the most important facts of Reconstruction that each presents and the meaning each assigns to them.

1. What is the author’s view of the integrity and effectiveness of those involved in the
Republican governments in the Southern states? (Is the view of the “carpetbaggers” and
“scalawags” positive, negative, or neutral?

2. What is the author’s view of blacks? Is the author’s analysis of Reconstruction based on
racial assumptions about the character of the freedmen? Are blacks passive or active
participants in shaping Reconstruction and their own lives?

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction? Is the seizure of power
by white Southerners a welcome or regrettable development? What is the author’s view
on such terrorist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan?

I. Reconstruction (1906) – Thomas W. Wilson

1. What is the author’s view of the integrity and effectiveness of those involved in
the Republican governments in the Southern states?

Positive Negative Neutral


Scalawags X
Carpetbagger X
s

2. What is the author’s view of blacks?


Blacks are passive. They are being controlled by the carpetbaggers rather than
the scalawags. They’re just a tool that the carpetbaggers use to take control
over the south

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction?


The Ku Klux Klan was not negatively portrayed. They were more or less a last
resort to come back into power over their land.

II. The Negro in Reconstruction (1922) – Carter Woodson

1. What is the author’s view of the integrity and effectiveness of those involved in
the Republican governments in the Southern states?

Positive Negative Neutral


Scalawags X
Carpetbagg X

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ers

2. What is the author’s view of blacks?


Blacks are passive. They are active.

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction?


The Ku Klux Klan was only formed to terrorize the negros’

III. The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1966) – Thomas A. Bailey

1. What is the author’s view of the integrity and effectiveness of those involved in
the Republican governments in the Southern states?

Positive Negative Neutral


Scalawags X
Carpetbagg X
ers

2. What is the author’s view of blacks?


They were uneducated, couldn’t read, and could not handle the responsibility to
vote. They could not register to vote because they did not know their ages, or
names. Some of them made up names.

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction?


The Ku Klux Klan was formed to scare the carpet baggers and the negros away
from the polls because of the downfall of the southern states had taken since
blacks could vote. The KKK was put out to be like, Nazi’s

IV. Reconstruction: An unfinished Revolution (2001) – Mary Beth Norton ET AL.

1. What is the author’s view of the integrity and effectiveness of those involved in
the Republican governments in the Southern states?
The scalawags did everything in their power to keep the Negro’s from voting …
and to keep them as slaves. Even though slavery was supposed to be over, the
whites didn’t tell them. The whites believed that the only way of governing the
blacks was with a whip. Still the blacks voted … Republican … They may not have
been able to read, but they had common sense and they used it!

Positive Negative Neutral


Scalawags X
Carpetbagg X
ers

2. What is the author’s view of blacks?


They were corrupt also. I thought this was pretty neutral.

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction?


Reconstruction did not work. The KKK governed, intimidated, and attacked every
black person in office.

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Failure of Reconstruction
A combination of difficult fiscal problems, Republican mistakes, racial hostility, and terror brought
down the Republican regimes. In most southern states, “Radical Reconstruction” lasted only a few
years. The most enduring failure of Reconstruction, however, not political; it was social and
economic. Reconstruction failed to alter the South’s social structure or its distribution of wealth
and power. Without land of their own, freed men and women were dependent on white
landowners who could and did use their economic power to compromise blacks’ political freedom.
Armed only with the ballot, freed men in the South had little chance to effect major changes.

CONCLUSION
Wilson’s text - reflects the racist assumptions at the heart of the triumphant
Southern view of Reconstruction. Viewpoint: Black inferiority

Woodson’s text – demonstrated the importance of racial assumptions in shaping


interpretations about Reconstruction. It also illustrates that historians are more
than mouthpieces for the dominant views of their day.

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