Was Reconstruction a success or failure?Task:

In your notebook create a T-chart on two separate pages of your notebook. On the left side label the top SUCCESS and on the right side label the top FAILURE.

Read and analyze the following primary sources. After you have read or analyzed each source, write the document number

under either the failure section or the success section. Next, provide a one or two sentence explanation as to why this source

supports your point that reconstruction was either a failure or a success.

Document 1

Document 6

Alfred R. Wauld, "The First Vote,"ekly, November 16, 1867

Document 2

. . . All persons born or naturalized in the United State, …. are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. (No) State (shall) make or enforce any law which shall abridge (take away) the privileges…of citizens of the U.S; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

Source: 14th Amendment, Section

Document 3: This graph shows the illiteracy (lack of reading ability) rates in the south from 1880 to 1950 for African Americans and whites.

Document 4

After freedom, we worked on shares awhile. Then we rented. When we worked on shares, we couldn’t make nothing – just overalls and something to eat. Half went to the white man, and you would destroy your half if you weren’t careful. A man that didn’t know how to count would always lose. He might lose anyhow. The white folks didn’t give no itemized statement. No, you just had to take their word. They never give you no details. They just say you owe so much…If you didn’t make no money, that’s all right; they would advance you more. But you better not try to leave and get caught. They’d keep you in debt. They were sharp.

Former slave Henry Blake, from an account to a Federal Writer’s Project interviewer in the 1930’s. The FWP had sent such interviewers South to record the narratives of former slaves still living at that time.

Document 5

Document 6

Document 7

This excerpt is from The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877, by Kenneth M. Stampp (Vintage Books, 1967, p 193). Stamp was a professor of history at the University of California at Berkely.

In these images we see a classrooms in two African American school in the south in the 1920’s and 1930’s

. . . We believe you are not familiar with the description of the Ku Klux Klans riding nightlyover the country, going from county to county, and in the county towns, spreading terrorwherever they go by robbing, whipping, ravishing, and killing our people without provocation[reason], compelling [forcing] colored people to break the ice and bathe in the chilly waters ofthe Kentucky river.

The [state] legislature has adjourned. They refused to enact any laws to

Meanwhile, southern Democrats gained strength when Congress finally removed the political disabilities form most of the prewar leadership. In May, 1872, because of pressure from the liberal Republicans, Congress passed a general Amnesty Act which restored the right of office holding (and voting) to the vast majority of those who had been disqualified (under the Reconstruction Acts of 1866)….After the passage of this act, only a few hundred ex-Confederates remained unpardoned.

Document 8

The Establishment of Historically Black Colleges in the South During

Reconstruction

Source - Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey, John R. Howe, Peter J. Frederick, Allen F. Davis, and Allan M. Winkler. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society, 6th ed. New York: Pearson

Education Inc., 2004.

Document 9

The passing of a great human institution (freedmen’s bureau) before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of striving for other men. The legacy of the Freedmen's Bureau is the heavy heritage of this generation. Today, when new and vaste problems are destined to strain every fibre of the national mind and soul, would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? For this much all men know: despite compromise struggle, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf states, for miles and miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or thpenitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom,they stand on a different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must have

Black colleges established before the Civil War

Black Colleges established during Reconstruction

Meanwhile, southern Democrats gained strength when Congress finally removed the political disabilities form most of the prewar leadership. In May, 1872, because of pressure from the liberal Republicans, Congress passed a general Amnesty Act which restored the right of office holding (and voting) to the vast majority of those who had been disqualified (under the Reconstruction Acts of 1866)….After the passage of this act, only a few hundred ex-Confederates remained unpardoned.

Document 10These excerpts are from an editorial in the Atlanta News, dated September 10, 1874:

Document 11

The disputed Presidential Election of 1876 set the stage for the final stage of Reconstruction – the removal of federal troops from the last three “unreconstructed states” : Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina.

The passing of a great human institution (freedmen’s bureau) before its work is done, like the untimely passing of a single soul, but leaves a legacy of striving for other men. The legacy of the Freedmen's Bureau is the heavy heritage of this generation. Today, when new and vaste problems are destined to strain every fibre of the national mind and soul, would it not be well to count this legacy honestly and carefully? For this much all men know: despite compromise struggle, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf states, for miles and miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or thpenitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom,they stand on a different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must have

Let there be White Leagues formed in every town, village and hamlet of the South, and let us organize for the great struggle which seems inevitable.

We have submitted long enough to indignities, and it is time to meet brute-force with brute-force.

If the white democrats of the North are men, they will not stand idly by and see us borne down by northern radicals and half-barbarous negroes. But no matter what they may do, it is time for us to organize.