Good evening, APUSH-ers! I hope you enjoy this picture of Republican Stalwart Roscoe Conkling, whose accent in national politics began in the era we are now studying. Also, check out this pic of Horatio "The Sage of Deerfield" Seymour, former NY Governor, local luminary, and Dem. Presidential Candidate in 1868!
We actually had a great chance this week to study the Reconstruction Era with little interruption, so I'm feeling confident about your performance on the test tomorrow.
FOR STARTERS: Consider how the election of 1876 set the tone for regional/sectional identities for the years immediately following the election. Why was this election unique, and why did Americans, even in the late 1870s, understand it as a momentous affair?
15 comments:
Well, the election was unique because of the controversy that arose about who actually won- Hayes or Tilden. What was so momentous is that it ended the era of Reconstruction because the last federal troops were pulled out of the South.
Okay, its a good start. Southern states give in to the Republicans, awarding them victory in contested elections in three state races. It does result in the removal of federal troops from the South, ending the military occupation of the region, so to speak. What effect does this have on how the North and South, as regions, will proceed? In other words, what does each region lose, and what does each region gain?
Though the North gains Hayes, they lose their control over the South. This allows the Democratic party to strengthen itself and allowed the idea of "white supremacy" to spring up quickly. This hurt the status of blacks.
Rachel is getting there, and Derick is even closer. Yes, the Republicans hold on to the White House. They still have a significant presence in Congress. The South will vote Democrat for years to come, and with the removal of US troops, the Freedmen's Bureau is left to its own devices. This means that black codes, and eventually Jim Crow laws, will limit the rights of blacks. Socially, the Slave South becomes a Segregated South. But what about the economics of it all--what did the South stand to gain from the North, and vice versa?
Well, with the Northern forces out of the South, the South was essentially given freedom economically. Meaning, regulations such as the "Black Codes" could be passed in order to force blacks into labor (the south needed cheap labor since slavery was abolished. their economy depended on it).
This isn't the whole story. Consider those last couple of paragraphs in Kelley Chapter 20--don't some Southerners lament the expulsion of the North?
The South realized that Tilden would not rebuild the roads and ports and by allowing Hayes to be president than they were more insured to get the gov't to help aid the rebuilding.
Hayes agreed to "support the building of a southern transcontinental railroad." And the south was seen as a place for future industrialization.
Just the three of us, eh? Well, now we are getting somewhere. The Southerners bet that the Republicans will support the infrastructural improvements that the South desperately needs, but they also isolate themselves as Reconstruction ends. They don't permit the sort of industrialization that Northern interests may have brought to the South, which would have created a more homogeneous complexion to the country. The South ends up falling back on agriculture, bascially attempting to recreate its plantation system, and the North continues to industrialize, modernize. As we will see, the industrial North will lure Southern workers fed up with cyclic nature of the sharecropping life.
Any questions in the couple of moments we have left?
Any particular reasons why the South isolates themselves?
Yeah, like today when you said that as they went through a cycle of paying off debt and planting and harvesting and paying off debt. Somewhere- Kelley or the review book- it said that the land was also getting all of its nutrients used up and land was yeilding less. Does this also create a move to the West and not just the North?
Derick, think about this ordeal that the South, as a region, just experienced. They essentially fought a war over the rights of states to secede, and over a way of life they came to see as essential. At war's end, they are occupied by Northern forces, split into five military districts, forced to sign legislation that ends the "peculiar institution" of slavery that dominated their social and economic way of life, and forced to reconfigure their society at the behest of the Radical Republicans. By making a compromise on the election of 1876, the South can say goodbye to the occupation, and get on with business ON THEIR OWN, WITHOUT FEDERAL INTERFERENCE!
Rachel, it's funny you bring that up, because for many poor whites and blacks, this becomes a reality. The sharecropping life is not all that lucrative (I need to find some historical evidence that may argue the contrary) for numerous reasons, and folks have an incentive to move on. Sharecropping recreates a caste system in the South, one not just based on race. Don't think so? Well, I just happen to be listening to an Elvis Presley Christmas CD; Presley grew up in a poor, white, Southern family that no doubt identified with Southern black culture--it certainly comes through in his musical stylings--its what made him famous. So, in an unexpected way, 1950s rock and roll has its birth in the Reconstruction Era.
Good work guys! You are ready! Mr Davis, signing off . . .
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